
(ilass.?_iJQa. 
Book 






CX)PYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



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Sta?e Coach in Fire-Hollowed Redwood. 



OoM^, OUxJL^ OMdo^:)c 

California Redwood Park 



Siinirtimes Calleil 

Sempervirens Park 



An Appreciation 



Friend \Vm. Richardson, Superintendent of State Puixtinc 

sacramento. california 

19 13 




//. 



©C1.A343832 



GRAY countries and grim empires pass away. 
And all the pomp and glory of citied towers 
Goes down to dust ; and youth itself shall age. 
But, oh, the splendor of this autumn dawn. 
This passes not away I This dew-drenched range. 
This infinite great width of open space, 
This cool, keen wind that blows like God's own breath 
On life's once drowsy coal, and thrills the blood. 
This brooding sea of sun-washed solitude. 
This virginal dome of open air — 
These, these endure, and greater are than grief I 
Still there is strength : and life, oh, life is good I 
Still the horizon calls, the morrow lures ; 
Still hearts adventurous seek outward trails : 
Still, still life holds its hope! 
For here is air and God's good greenness spread I 

— Arthur Stringer. 



As a recognition of her generous and timely 
aid and inspiration in the acquisition and de- 
lelopment of this forest park, for the people, 
this ZL'ork is respectfully dedicated to 



MRS. ['HO lib E A. HEARST. 



:yi2 by Artitu 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

1. Frontispiece. 

Stage Coach in Fire-Hollowed Redwood. 

2. Father of the Forest. 

3. Mother of the Forest. 

4. Growing Trees ox Upturxeu Stump. 

5. The Cloistered Aisle. 

6. Scene on Sempervirens Creek. 

7. 8. ]M.\NZANiT.\ in Bloom. 

Ceonothis or Wild Lilacs. 

9. ToYON, OR Christ.mas Berry. 

10. Scene on Opal Creek. 

11. Berry Creek Falls. 

12. The Chieftain. 

13. United Oak. 

14. Pine and Oak. 



CONTENTS. 

Pace 
Genesis or the Big Basin 3 

Geologic Record Showing Remarkable Upheavals and Contor- 
tions — The Lay of the Land as It Was Left for X'egetable and 
Animal Life. 

In Primeval Times 6 

Aboriginal Sequoias of Stupendous Size — Animals W'liicli Occupied 
the Wilderness. 

E.\RLY History of the Forest 9 

When It Stretched from the Bay of Monterey to Verba iSuena, 
Ralph S. Smith Sought to Save a Remnant — Described by Ferdi- 
nand Lee Clark — The Forest as Revealed to Early N'isitors. 

"Save the Redwoods" 22 

Years of Quiet Agitation — I'he Organization and Work of the 
Sempervirens Club. 

First Impressions 2S 

Extracts from Articles Written by W. W. Richards, Mrs. Stephen 
A. Jones, Edwin Sidney W'illianis. and Josephine Clifford Mc- 
Cracken. 

Father Kenna's Account 34 

A Patriotic Friend of the Park and Prime Mover for Its 
Preservation. 

Purchase of the Park 3S 

The First Commission — Investigation and Nestotiations — Timber 
Value of the Tract — Governor's Camp. 

The Tract Acquired ' 43 

Three Thousand Eight Hundred Acres in Extent — Quarter of a 
Million Dollars Paid — General Topography — .\spect and Eleva- 
tions. 

The Big Fire 47 

.\ Twenty Days' War with Wild Fire — One Third the Area of the 
Park Invaded by Flames — A Redwood that Burned for Fourteen 
Months. 

Timber Cutting 52 

Brief Account of the Infamous "Rapf of the Redwoods." 

Following the Fire 54 

Building of Fire Trails — Other Permanent Improvements on the 
Property. 



CONTENTS-Continued. 

Pace 

Going In 56 

Scenic Features of the Highway from Boulder Creek — Changing 
Seasons Reflected in Variegated Landscape. 

Rocks and Streams 59 

Miles of Running Brooks — Numerous Cascades and Waterfalls — 
Quaintly Chiseled and Wave Worn Rocks. 

Flora of the Park by Isabel McCrackcn 65 

.\ Botanical Survey of the Trees, Shrubs, Plants, and Wild Flowers 
in the Park. 

The Cave 82 

Light and Shadow in the Park by lirginia Garland S4 

Inlook of an Artistic Eye — Nature's Half Hidden Secrets — Revela- 
tions of Flowing, Falling Water — The Beauty that Must Be 
Sensed as Well as Seen. 

Altumn Color by lirginia Garland 94 

When Leaves and Berries and Bark Are Tinted in Scarlets and 
Crimsons, in Bright Yellows and Striking Blues. 

Fungi Gardens by J'irgiiiia Garland 98 

Another World of Beauty Under Cover of Fallen Foliage — In the 
Mushroom Kingdom. 

Bird Life in the Park by Virginia Garland 102 

Its Presence Easily Discovered by Those with Eyes to See and 
Ears to Hear — Practical Pointers for Those Desiring to Form 
Their Acquaintance. 

The Green People by Jlrglnla Garland 110 

Our Relations to the Race that Dwelt in These Regions Before Our 
Time. 

The Redwood 117 

Character of Tree — Its Ancient Lineage — Life History — Non- 
inflammable Nature — As Pictured by Delmas. 

Sentiment and Shingles 125 

Tributes by Famous Poets 8, 33, 42. 93, 101. 115 

Joaquin Miller — Charles Keeler — Dr. C. W. Doyle — A. D. Nord- 
hoff- — Charles Elmer Jenny — Bret Harte. 



A FOREWORD. 

California's Redwood Park Commissioners put forth 
this booklet, for the double purpose of conveying to the 
people of the State a better knowledge and a keener 
appreciation of the State's forest reservation, and also to 
impress upon the people the importance of securing for 
State ownership the entire area of the Big Basin. 

This task was entrusted to the Secretary, to whom it 
has been a literal labor of love, and the same can be said 
of the others whose writings are embodied herein. A too 
common idea of a forest is of sombrous silence. There 
is silence in this place, but it is a silence in which the 
voices of creation can be heard. There is majesty and 
sublimity in these time-defying trees, but as we have tried 
to show, there is also in this wood beauty and color, and 
woodland life in many manifestations. This forest is an 
aggregation of arboreal wonders. It is moreover a 
cathedral, a university, a sanatorium, a source of solace 
to the soul, an inspiration to the intellect, a tonic to the 
body. 

California is munificent with her penal institutions, 
with her national guard and asylums. Will the reader 
help us to secure as liberal consideration for Sempervirens 
Park? 

Arthur A. Taylor, 

Secretary, 
California Redwood Park Commission. 

September, 19 12. 




I'ilHE ever green bowl of the Big Basin brims 
over with secrets. Half whispered lures 



beckon down the trails, elusive meanings lie 
in the dreamy hollows, fleeting significance 
brushes past our ears in the flutter of bird wings, and the 
great trees shed upon us an atmosphere of living light 
and shadow that tests and tries, while it heals our world- 
troubled spirits. We do not know why we are alternately 
comforted and made restless, why in rare, flashing 
moments, our hearts ache with the ecstacy of a piercing 
truth; for we live mostly in a world of perverted mean- 
ings, and the vague insight of life so diametrically 
opposed to our general existence, stirs, disturbs, before it 
can soothe. 

If the iron is not too heavy in our souls, we know that 
we need Nature, but we go to the fields and the forests 
in hordes, we cling together in crowds, we travel far to 
hear the voice of a mountain stream ; but we secure to 
ourselves the chatter of our own kind within call. 

Then the half-told stories of the Open are not always 
happy lures. Sometimes the riddles hurt, are too hard to 
even dream of solving: yet if we only hear the faint, far 
echo of the everlasting question, not knowing that it is a 
(luestion. hearing only the unintelligible, eternal murmur, 
we are not in the forest in vain. 

Virs:inia Garland. 




Genesis of Sempenirens Park. 

X tlie beginning there was diaos. dien the 
vasty deep, then a con^-ul^ion that upheaved 
the bottom of the sea and it became dr\- land. 
followed by those incomprehensible aeons of 
time which we call geological periods, during which the 
forces of Nature were working with a zeal and a 
patience infinite in their scope to prepare for the presence 
of man on this planet. 

In this region creative power was manifested in a pecu- 
liar manner. The magnimde and the intensity of the 
titanic throes of the Earth ^Mother here are beyond the 
reach of the imagination, beyond the grasp of scientific 
certainty. 

Geologic stratas were uplifted by earthquakes, burned 
through, fused, intermixed by volcanic action, purged by 
torrential dowTipours, scoured by floods, seared by heat 
in a way and to a degree quite out of the ordinary- 
method of world making. 

The chalybeates and the sulphurs and the salts found 
elsewhere in deposits, are here -diffused and dispersed, 
impregnating the springs and forming a widely dis- 
tributed distillate for tree nutrition. 

The mutation theor\- has been worked out with soils 
and sandstones, as man has demonstrated it with flowers 



and plants. Thus it is that the geologist of to-day 
traverses this territory hammer in hand, knocks at every 
rock and boulder and looks and listens only to be 
amazed and dumbfounded. He tries to classify and 
describe, but he ends in uncertainty and doubt. 

Dr. J. C. Branner, head of the department of geology 
in the Stanford University, who with assistants procured 
the data for the government geologic atlas of this region, 
states therein : 

Above the basement complex of acidic plutonic rocks and 
metamorphic schists and limestones, the age of which is uncer- 
tain, there are represented within the Santa Cruz quadrangle 
alone fourteen recognizable formations. Nine distinct and far- 
reaching disturbances, as recorded by profound inconformities, 
not to mention many local readjustments, took place in the 
region during the deposition of these formations. Volcanism 
was active during several epochs, and at least one of them lasted 
for a considerable time. 

The structure is complex. In many places the strata are 
intensely folded, faulted and crushed. Faulting, folding and 
crushing have doubtless been going on in this area since early 
geologic times. The rock surface exposed is too small and the 
geology too complex to afford any clear conception of the 
physical geography of the past. The rocks occur in such con- 
fusion, so faulted, altered, decomposed, that their sequence 
has not been clearh- made out. 

(^* ^?* 5^ 

Doubtless Nature had her mind on doing some dis- 
tinctive, transcendent thing in this territory. 

What we know is that when the caldron was allowed to 
cool, there was left a more or less broken and detached 



range of mountains, ten to fifteen miles from the ocean, 
with elevations of from 2,000 to 3,500 feet. Living 
waters flowed from their sides and their interception of 
the rain clouds traveling inland from the ocean gave a 
heavy precipitation to all the region. Thus came run- 
ning streams in profusion, plowing their swift courses 
to the sea, eroding V-shaped valleys. 

In one instance this seaward flow was intercepted by 
spurs from the mountain range, and three streams and 
their tributaries converged into one before finding an 
outlet through a cleft in the granite-ribbed buttress that 
bounds the tract on the south. 

This peculiar conformation enclosed an area of approx- 
imately 14,000 acres, and when the California pioneer 
came upon the scene he called this the Big Basin to 
distinguish it from the narrower basins or valleys of 
other streams. 





In Primeval Times. 

IFE, cataclysmal life, which manifested itself 
here with such fervor and intensity in the 
geological formation and topographical con- 
tour of this territory, imparted an equally 
phenomenal vitality to the animal and vegetable creation. 
Fossilized and entombed in the rocks, evidences of the 
marine life of this region are abundant. 

Its ever-virile character is shown in the survival of that 
peculiar tree of the past we call the Sequoia, which not 
only awes us into silence and adoration as we stand before 
its living presence, but which by the visible tokens of 
prior generations takes our thought and our imagination 
back into the abysmal depths of time, before history was 
written, before tradition preserved the records of the 
human race. 

The Sequoia seniperz'ireiis (Redwood) propagates itself 
more generally from stump shoots than from seed. 
Sometimes we find the offspring circled around the parent 
tree for two and three generations. In instances, oft- 
repeated in a redwood forest, the parent tree grew, lived, 
ripened, decayed and died, and with a speed incompre- 
hensible for its slowness, passed back to earth and air, 
leaving a crater-like cavity where once its trunk was 
reared. 

There were giants in those days. 

The primeval redwood, not content with a circular 
expansion of forty, or fifty, or sixty, or seventy-five feet. 



often stretched its mighty bole over an area ninety feet 
in circumference. 

These stupendous craters are found here up to altitudes 
of 2,000 feet, mute monuments to the continuity of life, 
surpassing sworn statements in the integrity of their testi- 
mony to the vivifying and revivifying influences of the 
soil and climate. 

When modern man appeared upon this scene (only 
sixty years ago) he found the tract, which he called the 
Big Basin, as viewed from its rim, a sea of tree tops, 
difficult to penetrate by reason of its redundant under- 
growth, occupied by a population apparently able to hold 
its own against intruders. 

Grizzly bears were numerous and not bashful, cougars 
abounded, wild cats were plentiful as were lesser animals 
of the predatory class. 

But then, as now, the lure of the forest was irresistible. 
Hunters came seeking game, campers came seeking health 
and recuperation, woodmen came spying out the tall, 
straight trunks of redwood that would split easy — "shake 
trees," as they were called, which could be cleft with the 
ax into long, broad shingles : from stump to branch, a 
hundred feet or more of "clear stufif" to be packed out on 
muleback to market. 

Later, homesteaders invaded its semi-sacred precincts, 
mighty men with the ax and the rifle, who for reasons of 



their own sought the soHtude. There were only few of 
these intruders, but enough to eradicate in process of time 
the grizzHes and the cougars, and to make wild cats 
scarce. Provided as the other animals were with admir- 
able cover and, delivered from the mountain lion, their 
arch-enemy, the deer and small game became permanent 
joint tenants with man. 

Crude trails were cut to the coast and to the San 
Lorenzo \^alley, and tanbark to some extent was donkey- 
backed over the ridge to Santa Cruz tanneries. 

Thus it is that while we write of this as a virgin forest 
we do not mean that it has not known man, but that it 
has not surrendered or been sold to the ravishing, 
exterminating saw, and retains its woodland integrity. 



THE REDWOOD. 

By Dr. C. W. Doyle. 

Hail, Monarch of the Woods! A thousand years 

Have sped since first you reached forth to the sky, 

-\nd still your trunk its giant frame uprears, 

.\s though it mocked at time and would not die. 

Your roots defy the earthquake's shock, your crest 

Denies the puissance of the winter blast ; 

Year after year your lordly branches dressed 

Their phalanxes in green, and still you cast 

A mighty shadow 'thwart the tangled glen. 

Rooted in majesty for aye you'd stand, 

But now your doom is told — lo ! pigmy men 

Will mar your kingly state with ruthless hand ; 

The widowed hills and woods will mourn their chief, 
And tears distil from every blade and leaf. 

— Surf, August 2s, i8g4. 




Early History of This Forest. 

RIGINALLY, the redwood forest ran from 
the Pajaro River to the sand dunes of San 
Francisco, in an unbroken embankment of 
evergreen against the westerly slope of the 
Santa Cruz Mountains. In the middle eighties, the 
inroads of the lumbermen had become so extensive that 
the idea of conserving a portion of this forest for 
posterity found expression through Mr. Ralph S. Smith 
of Redwood City, editor of the Times and Gazette. 

It has been said that Mr. Smith's zeal in behalf of a 
forest reserve was stimulated by the desire of the Spring- 
Valley Water Company to secure a permanent cover for 
their Pescadero watershed ; but be that as it may, Mr. 
Smith is entitled to the credit of first propagating the idea 
in print of saving a share of the redwoods for the future. 
Editor Smith not only advocated it in his own paper, 
but he obtained a hearing through the San Francisco 
Chronicle, which, under the caption of "A Redwood 
Park," published the following: 

Among the most beautiful of all coniferous trees is the red- 
wood of California, the Sequoia sempcrvirens, as the botanists 
call it. It is purely indigenous, and with the mammoth Sequoias 
form the distinctive feature of the forests of this State. For 
many years it has been the chief source of the lumber supply of 
the State, and in consequence the redwood forests have been 
enormously depleted. It is known to comparatively few that 



10 



within fifty miles of this city, in a southerly direction, there is 
a redwood forest of one hundred and eighty square miles, or 
over one hundred and twenty thousand acres. The northern 
two thirds of this tract is almost virgin, there having been but 
slight inroads made upon it. This tract begins on Pescadero 
Creek, forty-six miles from San Francisco. Its western edge 
reaches to within about four miles of the Pacific Ocean, on an 
average, and it crosses the summits and covers the slopes of the 
Coast Range lying between the bay and the ocean. 

The forest of which we are speaking is owned by private 
persons, but it is understood that a portion of it ample for a 
redwood park, say twenty thousand acres, can be bought at the 
present time for fifteen dollars an acre, or three hundred 
thousand dollars for the tract. It is, however, becoming the 
object of speculation, as redwood lumber is yearly becoming 
scarcer and more valuable, and if any action is to be taken for 
its purchase it should be done at once. 

It is believed that if the State of California would appropriate 
a portion of the purchase money, the rest could be raised by 
subscription from public-spirited men who know and appreciate 
the value of such a preserve to the State. Its proximity to this 
city makes it more available and desirable for the purposes of a 
great forest park than any other body of redwood in the State. 

Ralph S. Smith of Redwood City, to whom we are indebted 
for much of this information, has taken a deep interest in this 
scheme, and will undertake, if the State will appropriate a 
reasonably generous sum for the purchase of this tract, to be 
placed at the disposal of the Forestry Commission, to raise an 
equal amount by subscription for the same purpose. He has 
studied the subject carefully and intelligently, and while he is 
certainly an enthusiast upon it, his enthusiasm should commend 
itself to all who care for the future of the State. 

We can see no good reason why the legislature should not 
make an appropriation toward the purchase of this tract, pro- 



11 



vided the Forestry Commission shall indorse it. They are com- 
petent to judge of the desirability of the location for the purpose 
of a redwood park, and if their report should be favorable, and 
a perfect title can be secured to the State, we know of no way 
in which the public money could be better invested, or which 
would return a better income for all future time. We must not 
be construed as meaning that the park would pay an amiual 
interest on the investment into the state treasury ; but there are 
other kinds of income besides interest. Golden Gate Park is not 
a paying institution in the ordinary acceptation of the term, but 
it would be hard to convince a San Franciscan that the city has 
ever invested any money to better purpose than there. Yosemite, 
Yellowstone Park, Niagara — none of them pay money dividends, 
yet each is worth untold wealth to the nation. 

We cannot measure everything by the decimal notation, nor 
figure a percentage of money gain upon every investment of 
wealth. When redwood lumber becomes scarce and valuable, 
the esthetic point of view will not commend itself to those who 
have or can obtain control of this body of redwood, and the 
dollars will weigh heavier with them than the beauty or pride 
of the State. They will not care to preserve timber having 
an actual cash value, in order that future generations may enjoy 
a redwood forest. It would be too much to ask of private indi- 
viduals to sacrifice material interests for an abstract proposition. 

The Chronicle article, viewed in the Hght of subsequent 
events, was both prophetic and pathetic. 

Needless to say, the State did not acquire twenty thou- 
sand acres at fifteen dollars per acre. Fifteen years later, 
the State bought a bargain when it obtained solid redwood 
timber land at one hundred dollars per acre. 

The reserve in the mind of Mr. Smith extended over 
the Pescadero and the Butano, instead of the Big Basin. 



12 



A Redwood Park was not heard from again until 1889. 
In the mean time, Ralph Smith and his plans had both 
passed away. At this time, a portion of the lands now 
included in the State Redw^ood Park, a tract of 1,300 
acres, was projected as a game preserve. 

Ferdinand Lee Clark, who had an eventful and distin- 
guished career in military and civil life, was in Santa 
Cruz at that time, and sought solace and escape from the 
world in camp life in this spot. Mr. Clark wrote for the 
Santa Cruz Srirf an article describing the operations then 
instituted, in which he said : 

The region in and about the Big Basin is the wildest and 
roughest that can be conceived, the slopes being rugged and the 
level plateau covered so densely with underbrush as to be almost 
impenetrable. 

The operations then in progress he describes as an 
intent to fence the tract of 1,300 acres, for which purpose 
2,500 pickets were to be split. A space twenty feet in 
width was to be cleared along the line of the fence. 

All the underbrush on the plateau of Waddell Creek of 300 or 
400 acres will be cleared away and a great redwood park will be 
opened. Fourteen men are now clearing for a road. It is 
expected the place will be swarming with hunters and fishers. 

Owing to some manipulation of land titles, this work 
fortunately was soon suspended. (Some of the pickets 
then split lie on the floor of the park, still sound, in 1912.) 

Mr. Clark also wrote of "an immense redwood tree of 
great height and 28 feet in diameter." (Now called the 
Father of the Forest.) 



13 




14 



His personal letters were so enthusiastic that the writer 
determined to take the trip. It required three times as 
many hours to reach the edge of the Basin from Santa 
Cruz as it does now to "run down" in an auto from San 
Francisco to the Governor's Camp in the heart of the 
park. The twilight was deepening when the writer and 
a companion prepared to tarry for the night at an aban- 
doned tanbark camp, utilizing the donkey mangers for 
mattresses. 

The writer slept that night — nay, he slept not but lay 
looking upward, following the faint lines of light that 
traced the trunks of the redwoods, until they touched the 
stars. An optical illusion, perhaps, but not a delusion. 
Jacob's ladder was no more a myth or a miracle, for verily 
the redwood tips were in contact with the heavens. 

The things heard in the stupendous silence of that 
night, the things seen in its impenetrable darkness, were 
unutterable, but the slogan "Save the Redwoods" was 
seared into his soul. 

Primal Appearance. 

In the morning we followed the bark haulers' trail to 
Captain Clark's camp, where two days were given to 
genuine exploration. During these days we often shared 
with Captain Clark the joys of discovery, looking for the 
first time upon curious creations, marvelous growths, and 
exquisite manifestations of woodland beauty hitherto 
unseen by mortal eyes. 

Sight-seeing was a constant battle with the underbrush, 



15 



fighting our way step by step, often crawling on hands 
and knees, and sometimes compelled to adopt a more 
prostrate position, as was the serpent of Eden. 

But the rewards ! One by one we traced out the big 
trees since become famous for their size, for their height, 
some for their symmetry and timber-producing capacities, 
some for their wonderful trivimphs over fire, some for 
quaint growths of burl, some for their strange contortions, 
but all challenging admiration and giving forth an impres- 
sion of life and power beyond transmission in speech 
— beyond conception by careless beholders. We stood 
dumb before a mammoth redwood stump fifty feet high, 
the basic terminal of a tree, which some time had been 
riven by an unknown force. Its sundered halves lay 
stretched prone on the earth for more than two hundred 
feet, embalmed in moss, through time so long measured 
that on the top of the stump, out of the air had been 
gathered soil- and sustenance sufficient to support a thrifty 
young fir tree several feet in height. 

We felt a strange thrill when standing in the presence, 
and in the interior, of that phenomenal redwood which has 
come to be called the Mother Tree. Resisting alike the 
stern hand of Time and the deep fires of affliction, she 
still abides serenely, green at the top, while succeeding 
generations of other trees have sprouted, grown, matured, 
decayed about her. 

Not in the depths of the Grand Canyon, nor from the 
summit of any mountain, did we ever experience such a 
sense of sublime awe, as when through the thicket, we 



16 




Mother of the Torest. 



17 



came into the presence of those four redwoods, now 
known as the Calendar group. Four trees, straight as 
arrows, symmetrically seamed, rising more than two 
hundred feet into the heavens, of exactly equal size, stand- 
ing an equi-distance apart, directly upon the points of the 
compass, north, east, south and west. To this day there 
is a mystery about these trees that refuses to resolve itself 
into the commonplace. 

But the mornings — and the same mornings dawn here 
forever, past, present and future. Oh, the dawning of the 
mornings ! When the light so softly, gently, so sweetly 
persuasive, so tenderly penetrates the night, stealing upon 
the sleeper in the open like a fairy's touch upon the eyelids. 
You must awake, for you are about to witness a miracle 
as old as creation, as fresh as the morning dew. 

Soon you can see "trees as men walking," and witness 
a movement in the forest which has stirred all animal life 
and set millions of leaves a quiver. 

Oh! the melody (if we may use the word) of this 
filtered light which comes down through the tree tops, 
diffused, rarefied light, the Divine light that made the 
morning stars sing for joy on creation's dawn. 

In was our leaving day, but before breakfast there was 
to be a visit to a fallen tree in the bosom of Opal Creek, 
from whose upturned stump three lusty redwoods had 
grown, standing in exact Hne with each other, with their 
foothold embanked in moss and ferns. It was a "fierce" 
brush fight to reach the spot, but then the wonder and the 
beauty, the suggestiveness and the sublimity of the scene, 



18 




Growing Trees on Upturned Stump. 



Fhoto by Applyl 



19 



absorbed every sense. Tiger lilies, taller than any man, 
with blooms of flaring fire stood by the side of the 
prostrate body of this past potentate of the forest ; sway- 
ing, overhanging incense-breathing azaleas hid the stream, 
and just as the first rays of the sun touched the upper 
branches of the surrounding trees, a thrush, perched high 
on an oak, poured into the arboreal silence a libation of 
praise that vocalized the very soul of the forest. 

These trees have since become known as the Crucifixion 
group. 

When we went forth into the world again, no man 
believed our report, and as for preserving redwoods, the 
timber-cutting population of that period looked at us with 
the same contemptuous pity that they would if we had 
proposed to conserve the waters of the Bay of Monterey. 

Nevertheless, within twelve years, the State invested a 
quarter of a million dollars in this forest, to the honor 
and credit of its legislators, and the ultimate blessing of 
mankind. 



^ 



Early Explorers. 

During that year several articles were published in the 
San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury and other 
State papers, emanating from Captain Clark and others, 
all giving favorable consideration to the project of pre- 
serving a "Redwood Park of the Pacific." Editorially 
the Chronicle gave emphatic endorsement to the plan, and 
of the work of publicity carried on at that time said : 

F. L. Clark, whose interesting accounts of the Santa Cruz Big 




20 



Trees have lately been published in the Chronicle, has been 
exploring the recesses of the Big Basin, a grand area of mountain 
land lying in San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties, taking the 
elevation of the prominent ridges and mapping out the intricate 
system of streams that have their rise in that region. Mr. Clark 
has entered the basin from different directions, obtaining infor- 
mation by actual observation of value to those interested in the 
topography of the country, and aiding materially in the correction 
or confirmation of surveys made. This work is in the line of 
that undertaken by the late Ralph Smith, who, as editor of the 
Redwood City Gaccttc, was untiring in his efforts to secure as a 
national park some portion of the great groves of redwood that 
are now rapidly disappearing before the ax of the woodcutter. 

Captain Clark traced the headwaters of the Pescadero. 
the Butano. the \\addell. the Gazos, Boulder Creek, and 
the San Lorenzo, and the elevations and directions he gave 
have been confirmed by the Government surveys since 
made. His last article ended with these words : 

All this great triangle is one vast forest of noble redwoods 
interspersed with groves of oak and many kinds of pines, with a 
dense undergrowth of smaller trees and shrubs. 

He was solicited to prepare a paper on the Sequoia 
scmpcn'irots to be read before the State Horticultural 
Society at its meeting in Santa Cruz in 1891. This paper 
was afterward published in Wood and Iron, and portions 
of it obtained a well-merited circulation in the State press. 

His appreciation of the redwood is attested by the 
following extract : 

Nowhere throughout the world can be found trees more 
majestic — inspiring! There is a grand symmetry in their growth 



1^ 



21 



quite distinct from the sturdy habit of the ancient oaks of Europe, 
the towering grace of Australia's eucalyti, the pillared shade of 
the banyan trees of India, or the dome-like, sepulchral forms of 
the great African baobabs, all of which have excited the admira- 
tion — yes, the worship — of man from remote ages. 

Involuntarily we associate the Sequoias in antiquity with the 
Pyramids; and while wandering amidst their massive growths 
one half expects to find there the ruins of fanes and temples as 
ancient as those on the banks of the Nile, or the quaintly 
sculptured monuments of the Toltec and Aztec races, lying half 
buried in the dense forests of Chiapas and Yucatan. 

When these great trees were seedlings — the Egyptian Pyramids 
were fresh from the builders' hands — the foundation stones of 
those of South America were not yet laid. 

In those dim, distant days the very l.\ni) from which they 
sprang was — geologists affirm — yet newly upheaved from the 
ocean depths. The rugged range of the Sierras, on whose 
western slopes the Sequoia gigantca is only found, looked down 
upon the broad, shallow lake covering the valleys of the San 
Joaquin and Sacramento ; while on the Coast Range hills the 
delicate foliage of the scmpervirens — our own "redwoods" — began 
to tinge with ever-living green the otherwise bare elevations. 

In the growth of these great trees one feels there is a tremen- 
dous vitality that time cannot weaken — that the passing centuries 
seem but to renew. They are prostrated by violent storms, by 
earthquakes, by the ax of the woodman ; here and there they are 
undermined by floods or eaten out by oft-recurring fires, but 
though, in the latter case, they may be reduced to mere shells, 
though we may stand within the lofty shaft and gaze upward 
through the hollow column's blackened heart two hundred feet 
and see the nearby clouds drift by, yet the trunk sends out a 
vigorous growth of branch and leaf and fruit ; the shell is still 
"scmpervirens." 



22 




"Save the Redwoods." 

I.TIIOI'GII much sentiment was aroused at 

this time for the salvation of "some redwoods 

somewhere," yet the movement lacked political 

or commercial leadership, and lapsed into a 

waiting mood. 

The decade that followed was one of education and 
evolution along lines of forestry and conservation. The 
hope of a redwood reserve in the Big Basin was never 
abandoned, and its advocates often secured a hearing in 
the public prints. The value of such a reservation had 
been presented to the late Senator Stanford in so con- 
vincing a light that he had determined to secure several 
thousantl acres in this region and annex it to the university 
he iiad founded, his death preventing the consummation 
of his plans. Meantime. Dr. W. R. Dudley, head of the 
botanical department of Stanford University, made dili- 
gent research into the vegetable life here manifest, finding 
a variety of trees, plants and shrubs, indicating this as a 
transitional zone for northern and southern trees of the 
Pacific coast. 

On March 17. IQOO. a double-column, double-leadeil 
editorial appeared in the Santa Cruz Surf, in which, 
among other things, was stated : 

All lovers of Nature, every person who appreciates the majesty 
of a tree, every individual whose hopes and aspirations extend 
into the future, must rejoice in the action of Congress designed 
to avert the destruction of the famous Big Trees of Calaveras. 




23 




Imto liy Slreiiliii . 



The Cloisievoil Ais 




24 



John Muir saj^s : "Every Sequoia, I fancy, has heard the good 
news and is waving its branches for joy." 

And if these inanimate personalities, so to speak, are waving 
for joy, it must be not only because the ax is stayed from the 
gigantca, but that there is an assurance that somewhere a remnant 
of the sempervirens will also be spared from the assaults of the 
lumberman. 

With the impending revival of the lumber business, and the 
prospective demands for export, the forests will become extinct, 
long before California celebrates the centennial of American 
occupation. 

The present appears an opportune time for the revival of the 
agitation instigated some years ago in behalf of a redwood 
preserve. 

Indeed, it is a case of now or never with the Rig Basin, the 
last possible reservation of redwoods which shall not only include 
big trees, but the varied growth of a typical California forest. 

Its peculiar topography and distance from transportation 
preserved the tract in question from the early onslaughts upon 
the redwoods, and here within forty miles of San Francisco, as 
the bird flies, is a bit of forest as pristine as "the perfect world 
by Adam trod," and whose trees cast broad shadows before Rome 
was built. 

A pamphlet could easily be written descriptive of Nature's 
manifestations in this peculiarly favored spot. This article can 
only hint, and suggest, and it must suffice to say that altogether 
there are over fifty varieties of tree growth within an area of six 
miles square, including many noble specimens of the redwood, 
fir, madrone, oak, pine, maple, etc. 

Its wealth of fauna and flora is distributed in a way that would 
delight the soul of a landscape gardener, for within the confines 
of the "Basin" is constant variation of aspect and altitude. 

As it stands to-day the preservation of the Big Basin appears 
to be "Nobodv's business." The timber cutters commenced 



25 



encroaching on its limits last year. This summer they will do 
more mischief, and in two years, the region instead of possessing 
Edenic aspects, will be worse than a Sahara. 

It was easy to stay the hand of the destroyer in the Calaveras 
Grove, when the women of the California Club took up the 
matter. 

Perhaps there is work here and now for women to do. 

Certainly the value of the Big Basin undisturbed to Cali- 
fornians and the world, now and in the future, as compared with 
tlic Calaveras Grove is as 16 to 1. 

Strangely enough, in a way unperceived, these latter 
word.'^ were prophetic. Within two months an organiza- 
tion had been formed, largely through the efforts of 
women, and including in its membership some of the most 
brilliant and energetic w'omen of the State, who aroused, 
stimulated and rewarded, by their approbation, the men 
who made the ultimate fight to "Save the Redwoods." 
The list included Mrs. Josephine Clifford McCracken, 
Mrs. Carrie Stevens Walter, Mrs. Stephen A. Jones, Mrs. 
A. T. Hermann, Mrs. Lovell White, and many others. 

During the interval extending over two years before 
the final acquisition by the State of the lands embraced in 
the present bounds of the redwood park, the necessary 
expenses of the crusade, amounting to several thousand 
dollars, w^ere furnished by a woman, a woman whose name 
will ever be written high in the annals of California — 
Mrs. Phoebe A. Hearst ! 

Mr. Andrew P. Hill, of San Jose, an artist of high 
repute in this State, had ever been an admirer of the 
redwoods, and as early as 1877 had painted the group that 



26 



stands near the Hotel de Redwood in the Santa Cruz 
Mountains. 

At the time of which we write, Mr. Hill had been 
commissioned by a London magazine to secure some 
photographs of the Santa Cruz redwoods. He came to 
the Fremont Big Tree Grove near Santa Cruz, but the 
owners of the property forbade him to photograph the 
trees. 

Much incensed by their action, the artist began to think, 
and the more he thought the more the conviction came to 
him that these trees, being natural wonders, ought to 
belong to the people. Going home on the train that day 
he wrote to Josephine Clifford McCracken of his opinions 
and conclusions. He wrote other letters, among them 
one to the Santa Cruz Board of Trade, imploring that 
body to "pass a resolution recommending that Congress 
be petitioned to make the purchase of the Fremont 
Grove." 

The Secretary replied to Mr. Hill, calling his attention 
to the Big Basin forest and adding : 

As your enthusiasm is for the smaller proposition, so in ratio 
will it increase for the larger. 

And so it did. 

Mr. Hill in writing to the San Jose Mercury of this 
time said : 

The Chamber of Commerce of San Jose quickly followed. A 
large meeting was arranged to be held at Stanford University 
and it was found that Dr. Dudley had already examined the Big 
Basin with Professor Wing, had mapped it, wanted it preserved, 



*T^..' >- jff7,- 



^*'^% 




3>f^r 



27 



and was just waiting for the lively, go-ahead enthusiasm of some 
of the members of the Sempervirens Club. Subsequently a 
splendid meeting was held and it was arranged to make a trip lo 
the Big Basin to examine the new wonderland. 

On the i6th of May, 1900, Mr. Hill's party reached the 
town of Botilder Creek. Of this date Carrie Stevens 
Walter of the committee from San Jose, wrote as follows : 

Our party from San Jose were received at Boulder Creek last 
evening by the Santa Cruz committee and entertained most 
hospitably. We leave early this morning for the mysterious goal 
of our ambition — the Big Basin. 

The Mountain Echo of May 26, 1900, contained this 
item : 

THE SEMPERVIRENS CLUB. 

The visiting party in the Big Basin last week held an enthusi- 
astic meeting the night before breaking camp and formed an 
organization to be known as the Sempervirens Club. The object 
of the club is to work for the preservation of the Big Basin and 
adjacent region as a public park. After viewing and exploring 
in every direction for several days the members of the party 
were so impressed with the beauties of the country and the 
necessity for the preservation of the remaining Sequoias that they 
felt no time and place could be more appropriate to oi'ganize for 
the effort than right in the heart of the Basin itself, there and 
then. Thus was the Sempervirens Club of California organized 
at the foot of Slippery Rock, just across the stream now called 
Sempervirens Creek, and the place was named Sempervirens 
Camp. 

The zeal and enthusiasm of this club knew no bounds, 
and it compelled the attention of the State. In a few 
months it attained a large membership. 




28 



First Impressions. 




N THE summer of 1901 a large party of Sem- 
pervirens people camped in the basin within 
the present Hmits of the park. Of their ex- 
periences W. W. Richards wrote : 

For five daj's we made trips throughout that portion of the 
Big" Basin which was accessible by trails, kept open by the deer 
and other animals. The size and grandeur of the thousands of 
immense trees that were seen will become world wonders in the 
future. Their immense height — 300 to 350 feet — diminishes their 
huge bulk to look at, yet there were hundreds of these forest 
giants, each of which, a score of people surrounding, could 
barely compass. One stalwart redwood has a partly burned-out 
opening in its trunk, about twelve feet in diameter and running 
up to a roof, twenty-five feet from the ground, in which could be 
seated a large party of people. Four immense trees standing as 
on four corners, were of ponderous growth, their graceful tops 
seemingly piercing into the very sky. Beneath their shade the 
ground is fairly ablaze with beautifully-hued forest flowers, 
creeping violets, wild sweet peas, wood buttercups, and evening 
primroses. The glades were garlanded with delicate harebells 
and tiger lilies and carpeted with tiny ferns, interlaced with 
sweet-smelling verbena vines. Inviting patches of wild straw- 
berries furnished a feast. This sight of nature's bounty, spread 
broadcast, might well gladden the hearts of millions of human 
beings in times to come, who, escaping from the clash and 
turmoil of a greater San Francisco, seek the enjoyment, the 
invigoration, the elevation and refinement of this glorious 
heritage handed down to us through the centuries. 



29 



Mrs. Stephen A. Jones, of San Jose, was another of 
the appreciative campers at this time, as the following 
will show : 

I like to think that this trail has been made, not for utility but 
for beauty ; that the few people who walk over it come to worship 
amid the cathedral aisles, to bare their heads and bow their 
hearts before the sacred influences of the primeval forest. All 
around you giant redwoods rear their stately columns, mingled 
with firs "fit for the mast of some great admiral." The wind 
sighs softly through their lofty branches, but lower down not a 
zephyr is stirring. A solemn stillness pervades the place, broken 
only now and then by the far-ofif note of a bird. The sunshine 
falls in filtered brightness, and flecks with gold the green gloom 
of the place. 

Into this sanctuary the common thoughts and petty cares of 
daily life dare not intrude ; here is peace, serene and perfect rest. 

In this vast laboratory nature distills a balm for our hurts, a 
subtle essence that heals and soothes ; and as we breathe the 
freshness and fragrance of the air we receive also strength and 
hope from some divine and hidden source. The things of time 
and sense lose their power over us ; spiritual influences are 
supreme in these hallowed precincts. The fetters of custom and 
conventionality fall away ; we taste soul freedom and feel intima- 
tions of immortality. 

In every natural forest there broods something of this magic 
spell, this power to elevate the soul and nourish it with holy 
thoughts, but, perhaps, none others possess it to quite the same 
extent as the redwoods. A sense of their hoary antiquity 
impresses the beholder and makes him realize the brief span of 
his earthly existence. 

The winds of untold centuries have sighed through their lofty 
crowns ; all of modern and much of ancient history has transpired 
since thev first reared their heads above the mold. Nations have 



30 



risen, flourished and passed away; dynasties of kings have gone 
down into the dust ; the sands of deserts have blown over for- 
gotten cities ; conquerors and conquered have been whehned in 
one common oblivion. Vast changes have taken place in the 
natural world ; rivers have left their old, and worn for themselves 
new, beds ; the sea has made more islands, cutting off promon- 
tories from the mainland ; harbors have been filled up with sand 
by the tides, so that what were once seaports are now inland 
cities ; volcanoes have built up fresh cones or washed away 
ancient ramparts in a molten flood. 

But under perfect condition of soil and climate our Sequoia 
scmpervirens have lived and flourished. Succeeding centuries 
have seen them more deeply rooted in the ground, and with 
loftier heads. Storms have not harmed them ; strongly buttressed 
as they are, they defy the fiercest wind that blows. Decay nor 
age does not blight them ; they seem to have no life limit. Even 
the fires, caused by lightning or some other agency, which ran 
through the forest centuries ago, only hollowed their trunks or 
blackened their bark, leaving them still green and vigorous. 

Edwin Sidney Williams, of Saratoga, another ever- 
faithful friend, wrote at this time : 

But the chief reason for my growing interest in Sempervirens 
Park is its beneficial effect on the people of the State, particularly 
the working people of the bay cities. 

There are labor's hosts, "chained to the oar of labor," for 
whom a costly vacation is an impossibility. It goes to my 
heart's depth as a patriot and a Californian that even a wild boy 
from San Francisco's Barbary Coast may come down afoot with 
his blankets on his back, and if only he obeys the directions of 
the firm and kind warden, he may be as secure in his nest in or 
under a great tree as is the Governor himself in "the governor's 
camp." The captain of "the boys' brigade" may bring his whole 





31 



company down and find abundant room. "Campers keep out" 
may greet him on the road, but when the warden takes him in, 
the czar of all the Russias cannot put him and his squad out so 
long as they obey rules. 

It's the true democracy of the park which charms me, and in 
working for it, though the least of the workers, I am working 
for the better California. No street arab will go back from the 
grandeur and the beauty of these primeval forests untouched. 
The higher influences of American life will have a better chance 
at him if he senses what the State has done in appointing him 
one of the guardians of God's great trees. And the poor sewing 
girls can come at slight expense and need no other chaperon 
than the gracious matron in the park. 



>b 



In those days the pen of Josephine CHfford McCracken 
was busy and found expression through the daily news- 
papers, in Out West, Western Field and the Overland ^i^ 
Monthly, in articles largely argumentative and appealing ^* 
to public interest. Her own impressions of the great 1^I»S 
forest in its primal period were expounded in an article ' 'j 
in the Western Field, on the occasion of a visit when 
Hugo de Vreis, the Dutch savant, was a guest of honor. 

It is a remarkable truth that the beauty of "the way" 
has intensified with the passing years, and the language 
of the trees, grown more and more intelligible to htunan 
ears. A part of Mrs. McCracken's account of the visit 
deserves to become historical. From it we quote : 

Even those among us who were far-traveled and world 
wanderers, found something to admire and marvel at here, for 
far as the eye could reach there was grandeur and sublimity. To 
the right, the crumbling walls of the castellated cliffs, crowned at 




32 



the pinnacle with the decayed glory of broken turrets, yawning 
casements and half-fallen colonnades, with the dark green trees 
above, and the brighter green of the brush growing out of the 
clefts below might well have been the remnants of castle park. 

In swinging trot the horses passed through miles of this pic- 
turesque country ; then the ascent grew steeper. An abyss, it 
seemed to me, opened below us ; the chasm was a wide, broken 
valley, bounded by a chain of mountains, bold, green clad and 
topped with redwood trees, single and in masses. When these 
receded and left an opening toward the sea, the sunny haze made 
filmy veils to waver and wane in the uncertain distance. 

Then we reached the summit ; and if the dizzy heights and 
green depths of the past mile or two had been greeted with 
cheers and exclamations, the level stretch before us now was no 
less fervidly admired. 

And now we have come to the line of the park. The red- 
woods stand thicker here ; the lower growth and underbrush is 
heavier and when the road comes nearer to the winding stream, 
we see enormous shrubs of white blooming azaleas, clusters of 
fiery lilies and still closer in the densest shade of rock and bush, 
great clumps of the five-finger fern. The horses' feet fall noise- 
less on the smooth road; the tinkle of the swift running stream, 
the subdued rush of the water where it falls over rocks and 
ledges, the song of the breeze in the tall trees above, cadences 
forever swelling and forever falling, the endless lullaby that 
Nature sings to weary heart and fretted spirit — how like a breath 
from heaven all this falls upon us, the peace be still that is spoken 
to all who come to rest beneath the canopy of these everlasting 
trees. 

We pass Sempervirens Camp and Slippery Rock, that spot 
dear to my heart. A slowly-rising amphitheater is this rock floor, 
with stifif, straight redwoods at the back, and side-screens of firs 
and madrone, chestnut oaks and young black oaks, with willows 
swaying here and there. At last we are in the heart of the Big 



J^- t!x^^:- 



33 



Basin, where the giant redwoods are awe-inspiring and over- 
whelming. Tape measure and camera are in constant demand ; 
discoveries of strange plant growth, of flower and shrub, of 
beautiful forest vistas, were so frequently made that time and 
distance seemed annihilated. 



THE SEQUOIA. 

By Dr. C. W. DoylE. 

See where it stands in undiminished splendor, 
The giant sentinel of Pan's retreat ; 
Man doffs before it humbly, fain to render 
Homage, and lay due reverence at its feet. 
No airy spire, no soaring dome tremendous. 
Declares God's glory like this tree stupendous 



Man's labors vanish ; temple, palace tumble ; 

And bronze, and marble tarnish and decay ; 

The greatest monuments e'er reared shall crumble. 

Ere this proud tree shall bend before Time's sway. 

The rosy morn its royal crest can greet, 

While darkness spreads her couch about its feet. 

The fairy myths of Greece that figured Naiad, 
Housed airy Echo, gave the stars a name. 
Apportioned to each Oak its proper Dryad, 
Could find for this no genius of like fame ; 
God's angels, Gabriel, Abdiel, and their kin. 
Alone might dwell such noble fanes within. 




34 




Father Kenna's Account. 

HE honored president of Santa Clara College, 
Rev. Father Robert E. Kenna, S. J., was one 
of the original members of the Sempervirens 
Club, and a member of the first park commis- 
sion, appointed by Governor Gage, and also a member of 
the commission appointed by Governor Johnson. 

Father Kenna, for the Bcc of Sacramento, wrote a 
history of the movement to acquire this park. It is in 
the words of one having authority to speak in the matter, 
and clearly and accurately bridges the space between 
agitation and acquirement of this transcendent forest as 
the people's playground. Somewhat abridged it here 
follows : 

The happy inspiration of an editor to save the redwoods of the 
Big Basin from the ax of the woodchopper and the saw of the 
lumberman became, when published, a mighty, living force 
through the Sempervirens Club of San Jose, and resulted in 
securing to the State, and it is hoped, to posterity, a great park 
of primeval redwood trees. 

No sooner was the club formed than an enthusiastic army of 
supporters was at its back, ready to come to its aid, as it did 
come, in the moment of danger and threatened defeat. The 
brigades of this little army were drawn from Native Sons and 
Native Daughters of California, from the Pioneers and other 
organized bodies and besides many patriotic ladies and gentlemen 



h\ 



'^ 




35 



throughout the Statt, and the niajorit}^ of the press freely advo- 
cated the noble cause. But the real, living force working with 
and through the club came from the universities of Stanford and 
California and the college of Santa Clara. 

The club's first move was to send an energetic delegation of 
ladies and gentlemen to Sacramento in 1901 to interview the 
Governor, and to interest the legislators in passing a bill to save 
the trees in this basin from destruction. The result of this first 
move was very encouraging to the club, and a bill was drafted 
and presented to the Assembly, empowering the State to spend 
two hundred fifty thousand dollars to purchase two thousand five 
hundred acres in the Big Basin, and to appoint four commission- 
ers, who, with the Governor as ex officio chairman, were to 
purchase, control and govern the lands thus secured to the 
State and the California Redwood Park. 

The task of securing the passage of this bill was left with 
A. P. Hill, who was the right man for the difficult and delicate 
work. One of the very first movers in the glorious work, full of 
honest enthusiasm, true as steel, loyal and honest, unselfish and 
self-sacrificing, his one object was to secure an honest, eflfective 
measure to save and to protect those magnificent redwoods. The 
dear, noble fellow with his wonderful enthusiasm and incor- 
ruptible honesty, and open, above-board talk, was an enigma to 
man}- old political lobbyists who tried to block his work. Nothing- 
disheartened him, nothing made him retreat until the object of 
his heart was secured in the passage of that bill to save the 
redwood trees. 

The politicians smiled at his simple candor. He was advised 
to go home, for there was no hope for the passage of his pet bill. 
Several times in the heat of the fight he called the writer to aid 
him, when what seemed impossibilities were demanded. 

Two speeches were made in support of the bill, the first a 




36 



magnificent oration by Mr. Delraas, worthy both of the subject 
and of the matchless orator. At the request of the club, I asked 
Mr. Delmas to speak for the preservation of the redwoods. He 
consented very graciously. The second speech, if I may so 
characterize the remarks made by the writer, was given in answer 
to an earnest appeal of Mr. Hill in one of the dark moments of 
his work for the bill. 

My remarks, though very simple, were given with an earnest- 
ness that made the Senators accept them as the sentiments of my 
heart. I said in part : Senators, I do not come to speak to you 
as a priest, nor as the president of a great college, nor in the 
language of such, but as a "forty-niner," and in the language of 
one who loves the great land of the West, and her magnificent 
forests which so often charmed my boyhood days and thrilled 
my young heart with high and noble aspirations. They spoke to 
me of Liberty, and they filled the mind with great thoughts and 
the soul with lofty aspirations. These redwoods are pre- 
eminently Californian, unique in their species and situation, and 
as a forty-niner I beg you to stay the hand that would harm those 
that still remain to recall the glories of those vast virgin forests 
now no more. 

I alluded quietly to the efforts, hidden and ignoble and unjust, 
to defeat the work of the Sempervirens Club. The Senate 
received my homely remarks graciously, and believed me, and 
when the bill came up finally there were only three votes against 
it. It was a great triumph ; the passage of this bill was indeed 
an honor to the legislature of 1901. 

The great object of the club and the men and women behind 
the club was threefold : 

1. To save the trees for posterity. 

2. To save the trees for scientific study and also the many 
species of fauna in the basin. 

3. Last and by no means the least important was to save the 
basin and its trees to form a great park for the people for holiday 




outings ; to prepare a place whither our children and workmen, 
factory girls and others breathing all the week impure air, might, 
amidst the great trees and along rippling brooks, breathe pure 
air and rest amidst those great forests, where their minds and 
hearts are lifted to higher, purer, nobler things. 



37 




Men and Trees. 

T has been calculated that a single tree is able 

through its leaves to purify the air from the 

carbonic acid arising from the perspiration 

of a considerable number of men, perhaps a 

dozen or even more. 

The volume of carbonic acid exhaled by a human being 
in the course of twenty-four hours is put at about loo 
gallons ; but by Boussingault's estimate, a single square 
yard of leaf-surface, counting both the upper and the 
under sides of the leaves, can. under favorable circum- 
stances, decompose at least a gallon of carbonic acid in 
a day. One hundred square yards of leaf-surface then 
would suffice to keep the air pure for one man, but the 
leaves of a tree of moderate size present a surface of 
many hundred square yards. 



aZ7\\D 




38 



Purchase of the Park. 





AS SAGE of an enabling act, and the securing 
of an appropriation, did not "save the red 
wood.s" or estabhsh a permanent forest park — 
at once. Governor Gage appointed as mem- 
bers of the Cahfornia Redwood Park Commission, Wm. 
H. Mills, the land agent of the Southern Pacific Railroad 
Company ; A. W. Foster, the president of the North- 
western Railway and a regent of the State University; 
Father Robert E. Kenna, S. J., president of Santa Clara 
Collega, and Dr. Wm. R. Dudley, head of the Department 
of Botany in Stanford University. The Governor himself 
was an ex officio member. 

It became their duty to investigate, bargain for and 
buy the best and most for the money, two hundred fifty 
thousand dollars. They made haste slowly in their task, 
and when it became generally known that the heavily 
timbered lands in the Basin were held at one hundred 
dollars per acre, there was much opposition manifested. 
It seemed so short a time before when the entire area of 
the Basin might have been purchased for a less price, 
that the lumbermen's figures were denounced as a 
hold-up. 

But finally three things were demonstrated. 

First, that the amount of standing timber was much 
larsfer than had been realized. 



;,>jr^''r* 




39 

Second, that increased accessibility and improvements 
in milling operations had enhanced their value. 

Third, that the lands in question were really cheap at 
the prices offered. 

Mr. I. T. Bloom, owner of three hundred twenty acres 
within the edge of the Big Basin, had bonded his 
holdings for the State at one hundred dollars per acre, 
but when the option expired, he refused to renew it and 
proceeded to cut the timber. 

After the felling operations were over and before 
milling began, a representative of the Santa Cruz Surf, 
with an expert lumberman, went over this tract, selecting 
here an acre and there an acre, counted and measured 
and scaled the fallen logs, and proved beyond question 
that the Bloom lands would yield in lumber far more 
than the figures at which similar lands were offered to tj 

the State. 

Other investigations were made by expert cruisers of ., .^ 

the standing timber in the present park area. Perhaps ^S 

the most convincing of these was by Mr. J. W. Peery of 
Boulder Creek, a lumberman of long experience, and a 
man of a reputation that commanded confidence. 

We append a part of Mr. Peery's report, as it deserves 
a place in park history : 

We selected five acres out of the northwest quarter of the 
northwest quarter of section 8 of township 9 south and 3 west as 
a comparative 5-acre lot as an average of the main body of the 
whole, and estimated the timber on said 5-acre lot. We found 
that it contained 168 trees of various dimensions aggregating 




40 



712,863 feet, board measure computation, making 142,572 feet per 
acre. We also selected 5 acres as a compared, 5 acres of the 
poorest 40-acre lot in the southeast quarter of section 7 of 
township 9 south of 3 west. We found on this 5-acre lot 103 
trees ; we estimated these 103 trees to contain 316,272 feet of 
lumber, board measure, or 63,254 feet per acre. These two 5-acre 
lots we had surveyed by County Surveyor Ed Perry, the lines 
brushed out so as to be plainly defined. Now adding these two 
5-acre lots together, we find 1,029,135 feet, board measure, on the 
two 5-acre lots. This 1,029,135 divided by 10, as it was 10 acres, 
make 102,913 feet board measure timber per acre. 

We deducted 250 acres, 10 per cent of 2,500 acres from the 
whole as waste land, leaving 2,250 acres containing an average 
of 102,913 feet per acre, aggregating the amount of 231,563,250 
feet of timber board measure. We also estimated 5 acres on 
what is known as the Tom Maddock place. This place was 
selected by Mr. Maddock and others, and at their request we 
estimated the amount of timber it contained. This 5-acre lot 
contained, as per our estimate, 1,124,419 feet of timber. This 
exceeded our best selected 5 acres 411,556, and I am convinced 
that ours is a low estimate. 

It may be added, in parentheses, that an acre lying 
easterly across the roadway from the Governor's Camp is 
estimated to contain half a million feet of standing 
redwood. These estimates relate solely to milling lumber 
and do not include the oak, madrone, fir. pine, alder, 
maple and other woods. 

To many readers these mere figures will be meaning- 
less. To partially translate them, it may be stated that 
the atnount of hunber mentioned would much more than 



41 



suffice to build a city the size of San Jose, and that it 
would require to transport it to market 19,280 cars. 



Governor's Camp. 

During the progress of these negotiations, it was 
deemed advisable to bring Governor Gage and other 
members of the Commission, with some lumber experts, 
into the forest for a few days of personal examination. 

To provide accommodations, lumber for a five-room 
cabin and a cook house was packed on muleback over a 
trail two and one half miles beyond the terminus of team 
travel at that time. 

This was the last year of the administration of 
Governor Gage. The following year, after the purchase 
of the park lands had been completed, and J. H. B. Pil- 
kington appointed warden, Governor George C. Pardee 
and family occupied this camp for several weeks. In the 
mean time, after the real estate transfer was completed. 
Father Kenna resigned from the Commission and Henry 
F. Kron of Santa Cruz was appointed in his stead. 

It was while Governor Pardee and family were at the 
camp that a notable "surprise party" was planned. 
Governor West of Utah, then visiting in Santa Cruz, 
being the guest of honor. Thus it was that three gov- 
ernors were entertained at this camp prior to the opening 
of the park to the public, and the name of Governor's 
Camp became attached to the principal stopping place in 
the confines of the forest. 



#^1 



,T4fev 






'»~"9ji'5 




42 



A majority of the mammoth trees are clustered within 
easy walking distance of this camp. There is an open 
glade that gives a space of clear sunshine and green 
grass, and it borders Opal Creek at a very picturesque 
portion of the stream. 

Distances and directions in and about the park have 
the Governor's Camp as the focal point. 

IN THE REDWOODS. 

By A. D. NoRDHOFF. 

As in some vast cathedral, one looks up 

Through columns, carved and tinted deep b.v time, 

Up, up to where the light grows faint ; and where 

Through windows, made by dust of ages dim 

A few pale sunbeams strive to force their way ; 

So in the redwoods. Midst the columns vast 

Of nature's great cathedral, gazing up 

One finds the same dim distance and the same 

Pale sunbeam and the sam-i dim, far-off light ; 

But in the place of windows, filmed by time. 

Great interlacing branches, tier on tier, 

Set in a frame-work of the fern-like leaf ; 

And in between, faint glimpses of deep blue, 

As if some master-hand, with earnest touch. 

Had painted every space, 'twixt leaf and branch. 

With tender color, like heaven's own. 



From the very beginning both the Sequoia gigantea and tlie 
Sequoia sempervirens grow very slowly and yet very steadily 
upward. The Cedar of Lebanon, though it may reach a very 
great age, has however in its youth a growth so rapid as to fit it in 
a few years for many purposes of cabinet or ornamental work. 
The glory of the Sequoia is in its stately trunk, but the glory of 
the cedar is in its magnificent foliage. 




43 



^ 




The Tract Acquired. 

ARGAINING, and some bickering, came to an 
end in the transfer of 3,800 acres to the State 
for the consideration of $250,000. The way 
the kimber companies who owned the land 
figured it was that they had sold 2,500 acres of timber at 
$100 per acre and "thrown in" the other 1,300 acres, 
about 800 acres of which was chaparral, and about 500 
acres cut over, or burned over, but capable of reforesting. 

This tract, which by purchase became Sempervirens 
Park, officially known as California Redwood Park, 
embraces the heart of the Big Basin. 

It was regarded at the time not as containing the 
ultimate extent of the Redwood Forest Park of Cali- 
fornia, but merely as the nucleus of the park of the future. 

The holding of these lands checked the progress of 
the sawmill, pending the time when an educated and 
enlightened public opinion would reach the point where 
it could grasp the importance of acquiring the entire 
Big Basin area for a permanent wildwood for posterity. 

Present park limits cover the source and course of 
the several small streams that converge to form Waddell 
Creek, emptying into the ocean midway between Pesca- 
dero and Santa Cruz. The line extends on the north 
to the ridge that marks the boundary between Santa Cruz 
and San Mateo counties, at an altitude of 2,390 feet. 
The main plateau which lies along Opal Creek, from the 



44 



Governor's Camp, has an elevation of 1,000 feet. At 
the southerly line of the park where Berry Creek has its 
confluence with the west fork of the Waddell, the eleva- 
tion is 500 feet. These figures make clear the statement 
that the park is angular — and these angles will often 
reach 45 degrees. 

To this diversity of elevation and aspect is due the 
varied forest growths here found, which constitute much 
of the charm of the forest to the visitor. The changing 
scene is a constant stimulus to take a tramp, and a con- 
tinuous reward for so doing. 

On the lower levels we find dense shade at midday, 
a soft, deliciously damp atmosphere in which ferns and 
mosses thrive perennially, covering the nakedness of the 
rocks, throwing a pall of living green over the prostrate 
forms of the fallen forest monarchs. 

Trees tower for two hundred feet — and more — their 
roots rejoicing in the percolation from living waters, 
their topmost twigs catching the sunshine above the 
canyon depths. 

Out and up lie the sandstone slopes, semi-arid, scantily 
covered with chaparral, swathed in sunshine, swept by 
the winds, beaten by the storms of winter. 

Although not originally included in the scheme to 
"save the redwoods" these chaparral lands are by no 
means the least attractive portions of this wonderful 
reserve. Following a trail one scarcely perceives when 
the giant redwood forest begins to recede until he is far 
among stunted growths surrounded by a new low vegeta- 







45 



tion, in an elfin wood, feeling the invisible presence of 
other tree spirits ; a different race from those who abide 
under the shadow of the Sequoias. As you look about 
you observe that the pines and the oaks have lost their 
majesty and are struggling for a livelihood, putting on 
thicker leaves and a tighter, stronger bark. The tan oaks 
have disappeared altogether, and only small live oaks 
and the most persistent scrub oaks are seen. The pines 
lower until they are not more than ten feet tall. The ma- 
drone gradually gives way to the manzanita, and unless 
the trail is well cleared, the buckthorn, greasewood and 
yerba santa will dispute the path. 

Californians affect to despise the chaparral, but to the 
Easterner it is a new curious wonder. The name was 
given to us by our Spanish-Mexican afifiliations, and 
signifies diminutive evergreen forest, which is neither 
timberland nor woodland, nor yet brushland, simply 
chaparral. 

The most interesting growths in this miniature of a 
forest are the manzanita, the mountain mahogany, and 
the toyon or Christmas berry. In each of these there is 
such a combination of strength and beauty as to attract 
the attention of the casual stroller, while to the true stu- 
dent they are a never-ending impulse to observation and 
investigation, a continuous delight in their seasonal mani- 
festations of blossom and berry. In the burned-over 
portions of the park a mock chaparral abounds, which is 
at once a blessing and a hazard. This is composed of the 
Ceanothus (wild lilac). It forms an admirable cover 



46 






against wash and erosion, bestows a wealth of color and 
fragrance during its long blooming period — but forms 
such a persistent thicket, and is so highly inflammable as 
to make it a pest to the forester. 



TO A REDWOOD TREE. 

From a forest poem by Charles KeelEr. 

O tree of trees, 

O monarch of the grove, 

The mountains sound thy praises, 

The birds declare thy glory, 

The brooks proclaim thy wonder, — 

And all day long the sweet springs sing 

To thee their liquid lays. 

Thou watcher over birds. 

Thou guardian of flowers. 

Praise be to thee 

For all thy tender care ! 

The white fog steals amid thy shade, 

The sun streams dimly through, 

The darkness falls about thy boughs ; 

The solemn night is near, 

But through its slumbering calm is heard 

Thy hymning strain on high. 



ife 



Qy7^:sD 



h- 



47 



The Big Fire. 




EPTEMBER the 7th, 1904, was one of those 
sultry days that occur in this cHmate only at 
intervals of years, when the heat bears down 
from above like a weight, and radiates from 
the earth with intensified fervor, and the atmosphere is 
suffused with latent fire, waiting- — watching — for some 
opportunity to manifest itself in flame. And the oppor- 
tunity came from a sawdust pile at the lumber mill on 
Waterman Creek. 

Warden Pilkington and his co-workers in the park that 
afternoon discovered a film of smoke above the northern 
horizon. Presently it was a curling cloud — presto, a 
denser mass surging against the sky. There was a wild 
fire, on the hottest day of the year, with the wind driving 
it parkward with a fiendish velocity. No military call to 
arms receives the rapid response that follows the cry of 
"fire." No other fire alarm strikes such terror to the 
heart or puts such superhuman energy into mortal men, 
as the signal that announces a fire on the prairie or in 
the forest. Many men were immediately busy, but on 
and on came the flames, higher and higher up the 
mountainside, swifter and swifter, as the superheated air 
made vacuums, abhorred by the driving flames. 

That afternoon of anxiety and spontaneous and speedy 
effort was the beginning of a battle which lasted for 
twenty days. There were three ridges and canyons with 




,.>^r^|>. 



48 



creeks for the fire to cross before it could reach the park, 
but that fire laughed at distance and obstacles, natural and 
artificial. In the succeeding days, Warden Pilkington 
had as many as a hundred men fighting the fire and mill 
men and farmers from all ihe countryside and nearby 
towns were engaged in the futile fight. 

For weeks the midday sun was a ball of fire in a bank 
of smoke. The starry heavens no more marked the 
night, but lurid flashes of flame accentuated the appalling 
darkness and stifling atmosphere. Although the fire was 
at times diverted and turned from its course, it was never 
subdued until rain fell on the 27th of the month. 
Brands and sparks were scattered over the surrounding 
country and new forest fires sprang up, until the fire zone 
extended to the ocean shore, and covered a belt from one 
to three miles in width. 

For nine days Warden Pilkington did not remove his 
clothing or sit down to eat a meal. Hard work, desper- 
ate work, and the favor of Providence saved the central 
and westerly portions of the park forest, but the scathing- 
fire sucked up hundreds of acres of chaparral and 
scourged and seared a strip of the finest redwood timber 
along its easterly border. 

In the midst of the fire period the writer rode on horse- 
back over the burned district. Loss of bridges left only 
three miles of distance from the town of Boulder Creek 
to be traversed by vehicles. Then the horses swapped 
harness for saddles. A trackless, trailless area of ashes 
covered both slopes of Boulder Creek. Fires were burn- 




49 



ing at the base of hundreds of magnificent redwoods and 
flames darted from the tops of tall firs. The igneous 
atmosphere scorched our faces and the hot ashes singed 
the fetlocks of the horses as we made our way up on the 
Cowell tract to Bull Springs, to the summit of the ridge 
overlooking the devastated domain of the Fire King. 
Then down into the park. Often compelled to dismount 
to let the animals clamber down some steep or cross a 
stream as best they could. Sad scenes there were where 
once the "Trail Beautiful" had led through redwoods 
standing "breast-high" to the rider 150 feet above the 
valley below. Hot tears fell on saddles at the sight of 
these hundreds of coal black shafts, once the glory of the 
forest. 

^* x^^ ^* 

It was alongside this trail that the tree stood that 
carried fire in its bosom for fourteen months. It was a 
superb specimen of the Sequoia sempervirens. Not a 
"big" tree, but a perfect one to outside appearance. One 
could not pass it on the trail without praise for its stately 
beauty. It was about twelve feet in diameter at the butt, 
and its crown of evergreen swayed in the breeze close to 
three hundred feet above. As the fire swept over the 
crest of the hill, it caught in its topmost branches and 
instead of swirling up the trunk and through the foliage, 
it burned down, gradually dropping off limb after limb. 

As it proved, this tree, like many others of the larger 
redwoods, was "ripe." The fire found it "dosey" at the 



50 



heart, and the flames that had Hcked up the limbs subsided 
|> \ when they undertook the task of consuming the trunks. 
When the rain came it appeared to appease the fire in 
this tree as it did in others. Contrariwise, the dampness 
only swelled the punky interior wood and smothered but 
did not extinguish the fire. It smoldered silently for 
weeks and then when it reached a knot hole left by a 
destroyed branch and got vent, it burst out in flame, burn- 
ing upward, and consuming the portion of the tree left 
above. It was now the rainy season, and the flames were 
again quenched as before. Again the fire smoldered for 
weeks, and again it burst forth at the faint contact with 
a ventilating wound in trunk. Rain would repeat the 
douching process, with similar results to follow, ten, 
fifteen or twenty feet perhaps being burned ofT at each 
eruption. The last outbreak occurred in November, 
1905, fourteen months after the initial fire, when the 
height of the trunk had been reduced to about one 
hundred feet. 

This remaining portion still stands, a monument to 
the noncombustible character of living redwood, a sad 
memorial of the awful days when the besom of destruc- 
tion reigned in its wrath over field and forest. 

How terrible are the destructive forces of Nature, how 
beneficent she is when her mood is one of favor ! 

Following the fury of the fire came copious rains and 
a long season of growth. Vegetation sprang from the 




51 



earth with more than Phoenix-Uke vitahty, and within a 
year the landscape was reverdured. 

The young madrones grew so fast they could not 
support themselves erect, and their tops swayed like 
grasses in the breeze. Now, after eight years, the 
visitor finds little in the general aspect to suggest a 
conflagration. All the redwoods left standing by the 
vandals are putting forth fresh branches, and in time 
their blackened boles will be bronzed by new bark 
seaming through the blackness. Perhaps but for this 
catastrophe we would never have known how ever-virile 
this forest was. 




52 



Timber Cutting. 




HE LEGISLATURE of 1905 conceived the 
notion that it would be wise to abohsh the 
park commission and place the forest in 
cliarii^e of the State Board of Forestry, an ex 
officio body, consisting of the Governor, the Secretary 
of State, the Attorney General, the Secretary of the State 
Hoard of Examiners, and the State Forester. 

Thus it came to pass that politics, like the serpent of 
old, entered this garden of the gods, bringing indifference, 
neglect and "graft" in its trail. 

With the administration that came into power in 1907, 
Mr. J. H. B. Pilkington, the efficient warden, was 
removed and S. H. Rambo was placed in the position. 

The big fire had left in its wake the dead and charred 
trunks of the Douglas firs and pines and of many hard- 
wood trees, which were an offense to the eye, a continuous 
fire hazard and a hindrance to the renewing of the forest. 
The redwoods, although stripped of leaf and branch, and 
left with blackened bark, were scinperz'in'iis, still holding 
on to life and ready to renew the struggle for existence. 

Notwithstanding this well known fact, repeatedly 
verified in the history of fires in redwood forests, Mr. 
G. B. Lull, the State Forester at that time, decided that 
these trees were all dead and should ])c removed. 

lender his authority a private contract was made for 
the cuttino: of the "dead timber," and in the winter of 



53 



1908 occurred the infamous rape of the redwoods, when 
scores of redwood trees, some of them among the finest 
in the forest, were slaughtered and converted into posts, 
pickets, shakes, grape stakes, etc., before the pubHc was 
aware of the depredations. No words can express the 
atrocity of this crime against Nature, against the State, 
against Posterity. 

It was supposed that only dead trees were to be 
removed, not live ones, and it was weeks before the 
fact became known that the redwoods were being 
sacrificed. 

The Sempervirens Club sent spies into the park, and 
the Native Sons of Watsonville, under the inspiration 
of Mr. George G. Radcliff, editor of the Pajaronian, 
always an ardent friend of the forest, did likewise. 
Their reports confirmed the rumors of the vandalism. 

Two days later, the Santa Cruz Surf had a timber 
cruiser, a photographer and a lumber expert on the 
ground, and within the week the wanton destruction in 
progress in the park was before the public in all its bald 
criminality. 

The grand jury of Santa Cruz County, of which 
J. B. Holohan (afterward State Senator) was chair- 
man, took immediate action ; George Wharton James, 
the noted California author, greatly aided the agitation ; 
indignation meetings were held in Santa Cruz, San Jose, 
Palo Alto and other places, and abetted by the press of 
the State, a protest was made that could not be ignored 
by those in power, and the cutting was stopped, althougli 



the contractor was permitted to remove from the park 
thousands of dollars' worth of split stuff, every stick of 
which was rank with robbery. 

It is gratifying to state that every official who was 
concerned in, or connived at, this outrage, has been 
retired to private life, and also that every redwood tree 
which escaped the ax has sustained its ever-virile fame 
by sending out living limbs, increasing in length and 
foliage every year. 




Following the Fire. 

ITH characteristic human foresight and sagac- 
ity, after fire had scarified the fairest portion 
of the park, active measures for fire protection 
were taken. A system of fire trails girdling 
the park, with laterals along the ridges, was projected and 
has been carried out, until to-day there are twenty-two 
miles of fire trails from thirty to sixty feet in width, in 
and about the reserve. 

There is a difference of opinion as to the efficiency 
of these trails in time of stress, but at all events, they 
will, when properly improved, provide a splendid system 
of bridle paths, and afford to the "man on horseback" 
an admirable opportunity for adventure in the forest. 

Since the State acquired the property, an excellent 
driveway has been constructed from the entrance of the 



' .'■•« 'jt-/ ■■ -'-^/' 



im^wm. 



park to the Governor's Camp, a little more than three 
miles in length. 

From the Governor's Camp radiate trails for pedes- 
trians (most of them horsebackable) which bisect the 
park in different directions. 



"; 



^* ^* t^* 

Permanent improvements, man-made, in the park 
consist of a system of waterworks and a sewer system 
for the Governor's Camp, designed to snpply the needs 
of a population of 500; a building constructed of red- 
wood logs on the margin of Opal Creek, used as a club 
house, a rustic redwood dining-room with kitchen 
attached ; a log barn, a rustic cottage, called the Lodge, 
at the entrance of the park ; and a system of tanks, 
pipes and pumps for road sprinkling. 



f. 




56 



Going In. 




NTRANCE to the California Redwood Park- 
is now via the town of Boulder Creek. Later 
there will be an open approach from the coast 
and possibly one from the Santa Clara \^alley 
side, but the seasonal scenic effects will not greatly vary. 

It is now two hours by auto from Santa Cruz, one 
hour from Boulder Creek. The scenic dividends on 
slower locomotion are great, and the hikers are to be 
envied above all others. 

One of the chief assets of this region is its kaleido- 
scopic character. There are new scenic combinations 
and aspects every month. In April the landscape is one 
continuous unfolding screen of living green. 

In May the blue dominates. It is the blooming time 
of the wild lilac, and the heavens above, the bay beyond 
and the region round about is all one undulating mass 
of blue, varying in shade from the faintest azure to the 
deepest indigo. Following the lilac, the chestnut (tan- 
bark) oaks have their time for blooming, and their 
peculiar, distinctive shade of green stands out con- 
spicuously amid the general verdure. A little later the 
azaleas make brilliant and fragrant all the brooksides 
and byways. 

In July the tilled fields have turned dun brown, and 
the pastures are void of color, but the madronas (the 
strawberry trees), the real red Indians of the California 



57 



forest, are at their best. These trees are ever charming-, 
in form, and foliage, and flower, and berry, but most 
of all in their bark. No, it is not a bark, it is a skin, 
delicate in texture, smooth, and soft to the touch as the 
shoulders of an infant. In the strong sunlight of the 
summer these trees glisten with the rich color of polished 
cinnamon. Under certain conditions of light in the late 
afternoon, the red brown changes to such a brilliant 
vermilion that seen through intervening foliage it has 
suggested the red tongue of fire. 

There is a human pose to the trunk. Seen through 
the tangle of the thicket, it looks like the brown, lithe 
body of an Indian, and in the moonlight the graceful 
upsweep of its branches is like the careless lifting of a 
dusky maiden's arms. Every feature of the madrona 
is feminine. 

At this season the glistening lacquer of the new 
leaves, shifting and changing in the slightest breeze, is 
offset or contrasted with the leaves of yester-year which 
have turned yellow, and red, and brown, and still adhere 
to the tree alongside of the new glossy green leaves, 
giving the effect of a foliage half yellow, half green. 
The old bark is peeling off in flakes leaving the new 
as soft and smooth and shiny as satin. The old leaves 
as they fall will fade and leave a carpet of pale yellow. 

If you enter the park in August, the sere time in 
California, what? More and more blooms. These 
lusty bushes by the roadside and others interspersed 
with other growths along and over the hillsides, which 



I 58 



A 



are so heavy laden with bloom are toyoii bushes, and 
their blooms are the promise of California Christmas 
berries, those brilliant red berries that vie with the holly 
and the mountain ash of other countries. 

In October it is red route parkward. The vineyards 
and orchards will contribute a little to this effect, but 
the protruding presence of the poison oak vine tinges 
the traveler's vision. Crimson, scarlet or fire-red as it 
may be, growing in bushy clump, or climbing the trunks 
of trees and trespassing often on the upper branches, its 
color penetrates the autumn atmosphere from every 
angle. 

By December travel will be light, but beauteous red 
berries will be pendant from madrone, manzanita and 
toyon, and the general landscape will have resumed its 
April verdancy. 




^m 




Rocks and Streams. 



59 




DISCERNING man discovered in far away 
times that there were sermons in stones and 
books in running brooks. The streams in 
Sempervirens Park are as ever-Hving and as 
everlasting as the trees and the rocks. Amid summer's 
drouth they abate not their flow, and their merry music 
can be heard amid the aisles of columnar redwoods, day 
unto day, night unto night, while the silent voices of the 
rocks give knowledge to whomsoever heeds. 

Everything that geology wrought here was turned 
topsy-turvy by the elements, and so we find to-day huge 
boulders of bufif sandstone, "big as a meeting-house," 
wave-worn, water-carved into castellated form by ancient 
oceans, lying on the very crest of the ridge bounding 
the basin, more than two thousand feet above the present 
sea level. 

Downward, southerly, from the ridge road, the rocks 
have been sea-washed and weather-worn into hundreds 
of picturesque shapes, many of them suggestions of idols 
or images, and there is a half acre well worth visiting 
that is suggestive of some ancient cemetery, the out- 
standing rocks not unlike memorial stones. In other 
places, the waters cleft the ridges, forming cliffs from 
fifty to two hundred feet in height, in every instance 
tapestried with moss and ferns and foliage plants. 





60 




Photo by ApplPhv 



Scene on Senipervirens Creek. 



61 



veritable hanging gardens of a beauty which altogether 
eludes words of description. 

All of the streams in the park are rock-bottomed, the 
soft sandstone of the hillsides solidifying under water 
until it is ''hard as a rock." Boulders and cobbles of 
conglomerate rock, lifted out of the bed of the streams 
by the current long ago, have left curious "pot-holes" 
in the bed of the creeks in many places, causing diminu- 
tive cataracts and rapids, which add much to the 
picturesque beauty of park streams. 

Because of the varied altitudes in the park tract, it is 
manifest that rapids, cascades and waterfalls must be 
numerous. Not all of them are yet accessible, but those 
who spend a day in the park usually make the trip to 
Berr}' Creek falls, the reward for the walk being divided 
between admiration for the wonderful verdure on the 
way and the joy of beholding the brook pour over a 
declivity of about seventy feet in a sparkling chain of 
mingled light and water. Sempervirens Falls can be 
seen — and heard — from the driveway, and there are 
several other accessible cascades on the same stream. 

Josephine Clifford McCraken in one of her visits to 
the park, wrote of the beautiful glimpses of Semper- 
virens Creek, and the short space of Opal Creek which 
was visible, and adds : "We could not visit other streams 
in their solitary beauty of cascade and deep pool hidden 
in monster fern and tangled wild wood." 

Nature left to her own devices for ages, eroding the 
rocks, plowing enormous furrows through the hills. 



62 



rearing mammoth trees and then toppHng them to earth, 
has filled up the channels of the creeks in many places 
with a mighty mass of debris, which it is man's work to 
remove and render the flowing waters companionable. 

Something of this work was done in the season of 
191 1, and it will be continued through the aid of the 
private benevolence of Mrs. Phoebe A. Hearst, until 
sufficient State aid is secured. 

In a report on this work, the Commissioner in charge 
wrote : 

In a distance of a quarter of a mile, we found five log dams 
or jams of driftwood, sufficient to obstruct the flow of the stream 
in high water. We found over twenty fallen logs in the creek 
bed or across it. Seven of them we converted into rustic 
bridges, five of them with a substantial guard rail. Most of the 
others yielded themselves to some sort of useful or picturesque 
treatment. One enormous fir lying directly across the stream 
has accumulated a mass of moss on its upper surface, which with 
the decaying wood has formed a soil sufficient to support a mass 
of huckleberry foliage and there is also growing on this log, 
wax myrtle, azalea, fir and oak shrubbery, together with a pro- 
fusion of ferns. Fortunately, lying nearly alongside this log is 
another which we were able to convert into a bridge and from 
which this log-garden can be viewed its entire length. 

Not a rod on either bank did we find free from verdure, 
although this was late August. No words can describe the 
refreshing beauty of this brook as it was revealed day after day 
by the removal of the dead rubbish that had encumbered it. 
Most of the way it is overhung by tree branches far overhead, 
then a veil of azaleas and huckleberry, near the edge of the 
banks, while down by the waterside are tiger lilies, many 
varieties of fern and other wild plants. As a test of your 
credulity, we might mention that we measured the stalk of one 




63 



tiger lily eight and one half feet, and another we found flourish- 
ing and blooming from a redwood log, the bulb having evidently 
been driven into a split in the wood at a time of high water. 

In several places huge blocks of sandstone have fallen from 
the cliff on the southerly side of the stream and rolled to the 
bottom or lodged along the bank. No sooner are these at rest 
than they become coated with moss and are attacked, so to speak, 
by profuse growths of Saxifrage (the rock splitter). Into the 
tiny, almost imperceptible crevasses made by this plant, seeds 
fall and larger growth begins. In one instance here, we have a 
fir tree three feet in diameter which started in a rift in the 
rock and has split it wide apart. A young madrone is attempting 
the same feat on another rock near by. 

Details of curious growths, of majestic trees, of the many 
freaks of nature exposed would weary you. I cannot conclude, 
however, without mention of the spot where a log jam at some 
point in the past had backed up the stream until the banks 
became water soaked, causing sound oak trees of considerable 
size to topple over. In falling they struck the top of the log 
jam, and have remained in a horizontal position since that time 
without slackening their growth. In the mean time, the creek 
forced its way to the side and wore out the land underneath, 
until now these oaks form a living evergreen canopy about eight 
feet above the creek bed. We constructed several side paths 
from the trail to the stream, and made it accessible, so far as we 
went, for fisher-folk and brook lovers. 

Every mile of waterway here is a rare and valuable asset, 
which, with sufficient funds, might be made not only a joy to the 
trout seeker, but a delight and solace to those who find in 
communion with Nature, their most helpful uplift in life. 

The temperature of the water in the park streams 
rarely rises above fifty degrees, and consequently a mess 
of trout taken in midsummer are fine-fleshed, affording 
fine sport and fine food. 



t 




64 




65 




Flora of California Redwood Park. 

By Dr. Isabel McCracken of Stanford University. 

ANY people make the mistake of trying to 
see the Park in an automobile. A flying trip 
from Boulder, an overnight stay at Redwood 
Inn and away in the morning leaves the 
delightful memory of a magnificent drive, a grand old 
redwood forest through which the light shimmers to 
the huckleberry undergrowth, pretty streams tumbling in 
cascades over rocky ledges or flowing leisurely beneath a 
canopy of delightfully fragrant azaleas. But the traveler 
who leaves the main road to follow the trail, to push into 
the woods with blazing hatchet, discovers picturesqueness 
and grandeur only hinted at on the open road, and a flora 
abundant and remarkably various. 

The species of shrubs and flowers of the park run well 
into the hundreds, and a day's tramp from the Inn up the 
China Grade trail to Butano Ridge and out on the "fire 
trail" skirting the eastern rim of the Basin, within which 
lies the park, or down the Waddell to Woodwardia Falls 
and thence to Pine Mountain, well repays the observer in 
the richness and variety of verdure that will meet him on 
the way. 

The deep woods, the brookside, the trail, the sunny 
ridges, the mountain peaks, each furnishes its character- 
istic foliage and flowers, its quota of lichens or mosses, 
liverworts or ferns. 



m 




The redwoods (Sequoia sempervircns) of the forest, 
with their tall columnar shafts, longitudinally fissured, 
towering into the upper air from the floor of the basin 
or marching in procession up the numerous glens, inter- 
lock their lofty branches with those of the Douglas spruce 
[Pseudotsuga taxifolia) and form a canopy over the 
various undergrowths through which the light shifts 
sparingly. The oaks and madrones reach up spindliugly 
in an efifort to penetrate this upper thicket of green. The 
huckleberry, the principal undergrowth of these woods, 
catches the shafts of sunlight and screens the shiny-leaved 
salal, the oxalis, the dainty starflower (Trientalis), the 
whipplea, yerba buena, and yellow violet. 

There are but two living species of redwood or Sequoia 
(named from the Cherokee chief Sequoiah), the coast 
redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) and the Sierra big tree 
(Sequoia gigantea). In the one, the leaves are elongated, 
borne on short stems and extend forward and outward 
from the main stem in a flat spray. The cones of the 
coast redwood or sempervirens are about the size of a 
thimble, ripening in one season but persisting on the 
branches after the seeds have been discharged. In the 
sierra redwood the leaves are awl-shaped, sessile (stem- 
less), and extend around the main stem. The cones 
are as large as a hen's Qgg, and mature the second autumn 
after formation. It is curious to note the tendency of the 
sempervirens to form a leafage like that of the gigantea 
in its upper branches, thus bearing testimony to their 
relationship. The park is a sempervirens forest. 




1 



- >^ 

The pine family is represented in the park by two w«^ 
species, the Douglas spruce and the knob-cone pine. The f^ 
former, already alluded to, shares the floor of the basin 
with the redwoods, the latter shares the heights with the 
manzanita and other chaparral. 

Douglas spruce is commonly referred to as the Douglas 
fir, and in the Oregon woods as the Oregon pine. It is, ^^j 
properly speaking, neither a pine (Pinus), a fir (Abies), / 

nor a spruce (Picea), but a member of the genus Pseudot- 
suga (Psendotsuga taxifolia). As its name indicates it 
is a near relative of the hemlock (Tsuga) having also 
many spruce-like characters. It may be identified by the 
conspicuous deeply notched bracts with their spear-like 
points applied to and extending beyond the scales in the 
cones. The cones are found in abundance on the ground 
under the trees. The bark of the tree is deeply and 
irregularly fissured. The cones of Pseudotsuga, like 
those of the spruces and hemlocks are pendent, while 
those of the firs are erect. 

The kriob-cone pine (Piitiis fiibcrculata) is character- 
ized by rather thin foliage with needles in groups of three. 
The cones are in whorls, strongly bent inward toward the 
tree, and persisting along the trunk of the tree throughout 
life. 

The oak family is represented by several species. Most 
abundant of these is the tanbark oak (Pasania densiflora). 
This tree may be identified by its grayish bark and its 
oblong acute leaves, strongly parallel-veined on the under 
side. The staminate flowers are borne in clusters of long 



■-'.it^ 



68 



catkins of disagreeable odor, like that of the true chestnut. 
The roundish acorns are supported by cups bearing fringe- 
like appendages. This tree is said to form a link between 
the oaks and chestnuts. The little scrub oak (Quercus 
dumosa) is found commonly on the fire trails and exposed 
places, sharing these with the abundant poison oak, a 
shrub, belonging to the family AnacardiacecB, which 
could well be dispensed with in the California woods, 
though alluringly beautiful in the fall when the leaves 
turn to shades of scarlet and bronze. 

There is a most beautiful grove of oaks {Quercus 
chrysolepis?) on the fire trail on the eastern side of the 
Basin not far north of where it crosses the park road at 
the "summit." This grove is a favorite sporting place 
for the birds. Flocks of bluebirds, yellow warblers and 
black-headed juncoes flutter about in the sunshine, and 
nuthatches run up the trees like woodpeckers, pecking 
into the cracks of the bark for their noonday meal. 

Another grove of oaks, delighting the eye of the trav- 
eler, stands in the park on the main drive, where it crosses 
Flee Potrero, more appropriately called Deer Potrero or 
Deer Glade, for to this quiet, grassy spot the antlered 
buck, the doe, the young fawn come each day at sunset to 
nip their evening meal. 

The Yew family (Taxacece) is represented by one 
species, the so-called California nutmeg or Tumion ( Tor- 
reya calif ornica). The leaves on this tree, like those of 
the redwood and pseudotsuga are arranged in a flat spray. 
The bright, glossy, green leaves, tipped with sharp, rigid 



69 



points and their nutmeg-like fruit, make the identification 
of the tree unmistakable. This species occurs as indi- 
vidual trees, never in groups. 

The California buckeye (fam. Sapiiidacece), while not 
found in the depths of the forest, is abundant on the 
sunny slopes of the ridges, on the fire trails, and occasion- 
ally along the gulches. Here, however, it does not grow 
into the robust tree as in the foothills. The foliage is 
less abundant, but the flowers no less showy and sweet 
scented, attractive to the bees and butterflies who seek its 
store of sweets. The tree may be known when in flower 
(May, June and July) by the large showy clusters of 
white flowers tinged with buff, with rose and pea-green. 
The leaves are spread from the end of the stem like 
fingers from the palm of the hand, with five to seven 
leaflets. In the Fall the leafless tree may be identified by 
its burden of pear-shaped fruit conspicuously pendent 
from the ends of the branches. 

The toyon or California holly (Heteromeles arbuti- 
folia) has secured a footing here also. It is found in 
company with the buckeye, but it also fails to reach the 
handsome proportions of its relatives in the foothills. 

The buckthorn family is represented by the coffee berry 
(Rhamnus) and several species, blue and white, of the 
California lilac. 

The coffee berry, with its olive-like leaves and incon- 
spicuous yellowish flowers, is a veritable picnic ground 
for all flower-loving insects, and when one hears an 



Sv. 





c 



70 



unusually busy hum of bees, he may know he is in the 
neighborhood of a coffee berry bush. 

The mountain lilac forms an impenetrable thicket on 
logged hillsides. It fills the air with a delicious, peachy 
odor and harbors flocks of mountain chicadees and 
juncoes. The beauty of a hillside of purple or blue or 
white is unsurpassed, and the bush would have many 
friends were it not for the fact that it harbors the wood- 
tick. 

Perhaps the choicest shrub of our mountain woods is 
the beautiful and fragrant azalea (Rhododendron Occi- 
dent alls), with its fine, large clusters of handsome white 
blossoms, blotched with yellow and sometimes shaded 
with pink. In the park we find it at its very best. It 
follows the numerous brooks and creeks that find their 
way through the Basin, gracefully throwing its branches 
out over the quiet pools, where the fishes dart, and over 
the tumbling rapids where the water ousels sport. Its 
charming clusters of blossoms and leaves of a rare, fresh 
green may be seen on all sides throughout the early 
summer months, but nowhere in greater profusion than 
out on Trail Beautiful, well on toward the China Grade 
turn-off. 

The shrub most characteristic of the park, with its 
rich shining green and graceful branches, is the huckle- 
berry. It forms the main forest undergrowth. Its small 
pink and white waxen bells, its no less beautiful foliage 
and delicious fruit, delight the woods lover peculiarly. 

In company with the tall redwoods, the pseudotsuga. 




the oaks, the huckleberry, wherever an opening affords, "^i^ 
one sees a thickly branched evergreen with thick, dark A 4 
green, glossy, elongate leaves. This is the wax myrtle 
{Myrica calif oniica), adding its peculiarly delightful spicy 
fragrance to that of the azalea blooms. 

Beside the huckleberry, the family Bricaccm, or heath \ 

family, furnishes several other species differing much in 
appearance and habit, the madrone, manzanita, salal, 
pyrola and the saprophytic pleuricospora. 

No tree of the woods can surpass in beauty the madrone 
or Arbute tree {Arbutus mensiesii) , with its beautifully 
polished terra cotta bark assuming a rich hue, where the 
sun plays upon it continuously. In peeling the bark 
becomes fissured into small flakes. Its rich, glossy, 
leathery leaves and red branches and dainty white bells in 
the spring, its brilliant display of red gold and green in 
the summer, the old leaves turning a burnished red before 
falling, its globular, scarlet berries in the fall, make it a 
very attractive tree all the year round. 

Isolated madrones stand here and there in the woods 
contending wath the oaks and wax myrtle for a share of 
the sifted sunlight. Many superb madrones are to be 
found on the Maccabee mule trail and a lovely grove on 
the Hollow-tree camp trail a half mile or so beyond Mad- 
dox cabin. 

Leaving the woods on any of the trails by means of 
which one reaches the ridges, one finds, sharing the moun- 
tain slopes with pickeringia, chamise, scrub oaks and knob- 
cone pines, the shrubby manzanitas (Arcfosfaphylos) 




72 



^ 




Manzanita in Bloom. 



with their bushy tops, smooth mahogany red hmbs and 
white urn-shaped flowers, or small apples kissed on the 
sunny side to old rose or red. 

The Pyrola is a beautiful little leafless parasite belong- 
ing to this family. It is found not uncommonly springing 
in the trail almost under foot of the traveler. Its red 
stalks, a foot or less high, carry upward the delicate, deep 
rose-colored flowers, hanging like fairy bells upon their 
short stems. In the deeper woods these flowers are white, 
barely tinged with pink. 

Another plant in this family here met with is the dull 
whitish saprophyte Plenricospora. It is interesting from 
its relationship to the red snow plant of the Sierra. Its 
thick white leafless stalk grows from two to eight inches 



73 





j0 






(e0.10B|ll. CEONOTHUS. "THeTCRRACB* Mk' 


^•!W 



Ceonothus or Wild lyilac. 



above ground in the denser part of the woods, and fre- 
quently upon the trail, and terminates in a compact mass 
of flowers, persisting and withering with the stalk. 

Much of the beauty of the trails through the woods is 
due to the lovely prostrate shrub, the salal {Gaultheria 
shallon). The bright green leaves of this spicy ever- 
green are beautifully contrasted with the dark leathery 
older leaves. The pinkish white bells dangling beneath 
the leaves are veritable fairy bells. The blackish berries 
are aromatic and edible, though rather tasteless, and are 
said to have formed an important diet among the Indians. 




Toyon or Christmas Berry. 



The most unfriendly shrub of the locality is the pea 
chaparral (Pickeringia montana). Ascending the Pine 
Mountain or China Grade trail one meets with this 
densely-branched, spiny evergreen, with gray-green 
leaves, spreading out over the slopes and mountain sides. 
Its magenta-colored pea blossoms cover the bushes with a 



mass of color during the early summer. Its long thorns 
warn the explorer not to be too ambitious in penetrating- 
its thickets. 

One of the most interesting of all the shrubs of the 
region, peculiarly so on account of its localization, is the 
golden-blossomed slippery elm (Fremontia calif ornica). 
Its large hibiscus-like blooms are very handsome in the 
shrubbery of green. It grows only on the mountain 
slope over which winds the China Grade trail, and is first 
met with a half mile or so on the trail after it leaves the 
Opal Creek for its sunny ascent. This bush reaches a 
height of ten to fifteen feet or more, and may be recog- 
nized when out of bloom by the dense whitish felt cloth- 
ing the under surface of the dark green ivy-like leaves 
and the tough leathery bark. 

The iris family is represented by two species, represent- 
ing a succession of blooms. The cream-colored irises 
{Iris dougJasiaiia) greet the April visitor in the deeper 
woods and the blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium bellum) 
welcomes the summer visitor to the fire-trail and clear- 
ings. The blue-eyed grass appears more like a familiar 
friend whom we have taken with us from the valley below 
than as a natural inhabitant of the place. 

Three orchids are characteristic of the park flora. One, 
the reddish-brown leafless coral root (CorraUorhisa mul- 
tiflora), not detected by the casual observer because 
of its nice blending of red-brown stem and flowers with 
the dead leaves and needles upon the ground, is, like 
Pxrola, fairly common and to be found in similar situa- 




i 



* 




76 



tions. Another orchid, a species of Cephalanthera/'' pure 
white and leafless, is rare. The third species, a rein 
orchid (Habenaria), is quite abundant. Its long ribbon- 
like leaves appear above ground in the early spring. 
Later the long slender stem shoots up, carrying its deli- 
cate array of greenish buds. The buds unfold slowly, 
and its blooming season is long. When summer wanes 
the greenish-white flowers may still be found in shaded 
corners. 

There is no more refreshing sight in the park anywhere 
than that of a cluster of tiger lilies, standing erect in the 
shadow of a great boulder or under an overhanging 
bough, and nodding their spotted orange petals over the 
rippling or rushing streams or reflected from a quiet 
mirror-like pool. In one of the most enchanting spots 
along the East Waddell a group of these peer over a 
great moss-covered log, like guardians of the spirit of the 
stream. 

The one who has a real afifection for the brookside has 
a grudge against the usual fisherman. Not because he 
beguiles the unwary fishes with his tempting fly — there 
are plenty of fish in these streams to spare a few for his 
pleasure — but for the reckless way in which he crashes 
through the magnificent stalks of these stately flowers as 
they bend their graceful heads over the pool, leaving ruin 
in his trail. 

Early in the spring the large rich leaves of polished 



*Found in this locality for the first time by Mrs. Juanita Gerlach, June, 
1912, on Trail Beautiful, not far from park boundary, and determined by 
Professor Abrams. 



77 



silky green of the beautiful lily, Clintonia {Clintonia 
andrezvsiana) , appear above the ground. The blossom 
stalk soon appearing, carries high above the leaves a 
cluster of lovely blossoms — deep cerise in the more open 
woods, delicately pink in the shaded nooks. During the 
sunny July days the flowers give place to the green berry- 
like fruit which quickly ripens into a rich indigo blue. 
The leaves, the flower, the fruit, all combine in a richness 
and uniqueness of feature which makes the Clintonia one 
of the most distinguished of the woods plants. 

The lily family is further represented by the wake-robin 
(Trillium, oratiim) coming early with its pure white blos- 
soms in its setting of three large green leaves, white in 
youth, pink in age, false Solomon's-seal (Smilacina am- 
ple xicanlis) , star zygadene, the soap-plant (Chlorogalum 
pomeridianum) , whose bulb is useful to the camper who 
has left his soap dish in town, several brodiaeas, blue and 
yellow, with a rare pink specimen, two species of Mariposa 
lily, one, the beautiful and dainty whitish globe tulip or 
fairy lantern bell (Calochortus albus), and the other the 
little star tulip. 

Covering all the ground, Hke a carpet of green is the 
sorrel (Oxalis oregana), its delicate white blossom pink- 
ish in age, amidst bunches of trifoliate, heart-shaped, 
spotted or green leaves. The "good luck" leaf of four 
leaflets occasionally rewards the observant. 

The long graceful sprays of Yerba buena {Micromera 
chamissonis) trail and interlace over the carpet and yield 
a delicious aromatic fragrance that delights and charms 






the passer-by. The flowers are small and white and 
appear in the axils of the leaves. 

The pretty trailing underbrush, the whipplea {IVhipplea 
modesta), keeps company with the yerba buena with its 
exquisite little clusters of white blossoms and delicate 
fragrance. 

The very dainty little pink star-flower {Tricntalis 
europcea) on delicate thread-like stem, in clusters of 
irregularly shaped leaves, lends itself most attractively to 
the patterning of the woods carpet. The yellow wood 
violet {Viola sarmentosa) and the little western hearts- 
ease {Viola ocelata), white within, purplish without, add 
their color and charm. 

Of all the flowers that fringe the stream none are more 
at home than the western Boykinia {Boykinia data). 
The long slender stems clothed with rusty glandular hairs 
carrying their sweet-scented sprays of small whitish 
flowers dashed with a purplish brown tinge, become, with 
the other saxifrages that neighbor with it, the mitre-wort 
and alum-root, and with the ferns and reeds a part of the 
personality of the brook itself. 

These three saxifrages may be easily distinguished 
though somewhat similar in leafage and habit. The 
fragrance of Boykinia sets it apart. In the alum-root 
{Heuchera) the flowers, though smaller, grow in a loose 
panicle as in Boykinia, the leaves are, however, more 
deeply lobed, of a mottled green and veined, particularly 
late in the season or in exposed situations, in dark red or 
brown. In the seed pods of the alum-root the two valves 




are equal in length. In the mitre-wort {Triarella uni- 
foliata) the small white flowers are arranged along the 
stem, the seed pods are formed of two valves, one of 
which is conspicuously elongated. 

In these woods the saxifrage-like mist-maiden {Romaii- 
coffia sitchcnsis) is present, but rare. 

Upon almost any walk one finds the lovely plant of our 
coast woods, the American barrenwort ( Vancouveria 
parviflora) with its sprays of white flowers. It is particu- 
larly noticeable from the likeness of its leafage to the 
fronds of the maiden-hair. 

Among the most attractive blooms of the chaparraled 
hillside, above the redwood line, are the golden flowers of 
the tree poppy {Dendromccon rigida). Its rigid pale 
green leaves and whitish branches form a great contrast to 
the darker green of the chamise, the manzanita and scrub 
oaks with which it keeps company. It has a long bloom- 
ing season, coming early and remaining late into the 
summer. 

With their flowering season almost parallel with that of 
tree-poppy and growing in somewhat similar situations, 
particularly around the rim of the Basin on the north and 
east, on fire-trails and sunny hillsides one sees grand dis- 
plays of the mountain balm (Briodictyon calif ornicum) 
with its pale colored lavender flowers and aromatic 
gummy leaves, the pitcher sage {Sphacele calcina) with 
its large white flowers aptly called "pitchers," and the 
bushy monkey flowers (Diplaciis glntiiwsus) with their 
saucy orange faces. 





80 



Hosts of other flowers greet the wayfarer who leaves 
the woods for a day's tramp on a trail that takes him out 
into the sunshine, patches of glowing Indian paint brush 
(Castilleia) with their brilliant dashes of color, or masses 
of the rose-pink godetia with its splotched satiny cups, or 
now and then, its fairer sister Innocence (Collinsia) or 
sheets of the lavender mint (Monardella) with its clean, 
spicy, refreshing odor, in favorable situations the red and 
blue larkspurs, the pedicularis or Indian warrior, the 
hedge nettle, wild cucumber vine (Chilicothe), vetch, 
sweet pea, the salmon-colored starry pimpernel (Anagallis 
arvensis) with its rich purple center, the charming pink 
flowers of the Canchalagua (Brythraea venusta), "fresh, 
wide-awake in appearance, reminding one of a rosy-faced 
country wench," morning-glories, forget-me-nots, Cali- 
fornia milkwort {Polygala calif ornica) , the fragile blue- 
bell flowers {Campanula) , the wild strawberry, the black- 
berry and hazel, spirsea, euonymus, bed straw with its 
fishhook bristles, the thieving broom-rape sending its 
rootlets into the fibres of its self-supporting neighbors, 
and many others. 

No account has been taken of the various grasses grow- 
ing everywhere outside of the denser parts of the forest, 
the beautiful ferns and horsetail (equisetum) growing so 
luxuriantly along the watercourses, nor the more lowly 
plant life of liverworts and lichens. 

Woodwardia Glen, a mile or so above Woodwardia 
Falls on the Pine Mountain trail, where the luxuriant 
fronds cover an acre or more and grow as tall as a man, 




81 



or the numerous gulches where the equisetum spreads its 
airy mass of spring green, a fallen monster lying across a 
brook, having become with age and moisture a veritable 
garden of mosses, lichens, liverworts — and supporting in 
its decaying tissues, young forests of huckleberry, tan- 
bark oak, seedling spruces and other growths — the 
"cave" with its ceiling tapestried with a rich coating of 
pale green, olive and pink lichens, these, too, are worthy 
of a place in a chapter on the flora of the park. 





82 




The Cave. 

By Virginia Garland. 

HE cave is a grey green grotto, scooped out of 
a sandstone slope set high over a small crater 
canyon. The path of approach climbs the 
brushy, tree-pillared hollow on to the floor of 
the alcove hanging over the leafy depths. The dun green 
tinting is of mould or lichen ; and some mineral tincture 
has left here a shadowy washing of soft green. 

The walls and roof are grotesquely carved. The long 
head of a hound shows faintly, the galloping flanks of a 
horse whose front you must imagine, disappearing in the 
stone. Satyr faces bulge from the ceiling. Fragmen- 
tary moldings, disconnected reliefs, whose origin and 
meaning are probably as hard to fathom as the hiero- 
glyphics in an Egyptian catacomb. 

On the floury sand of the floor, the footprints of pass- 
ing wood creatures, heavy hop of a toad, mad whirl of a 
merry cotton-tail, and the cranium-dotted trail of big 
black beetles, whose habit is to pause often and stand on 
their heads. 

Under the ledges in far corners, the bedding form of 
some larger creature. Perhaps the bobcat or the fox 
dozes here. 

Curved and hollowed like a shell poised over the windy 
canyon, the cave holds a peculiar phonetic quality, alter- 
nately hushed and filled with sound. A pleasant eerie 




83 



sensation to stand in the momentary stillness and hear 
the oncoming pattering murmur. Swept from high 
ridges, gathered up' from grassy hollows, trailed ground 
from the hillside, from the ground, from the sky sound on 
the wind is sucked up through the drafty crater and 
flung under the eaves of the cave to echo in pulsing con- 
finement. Listening here you are literally an eaves- 
dropper, but unless you have been false indeed to the 
Open, you will hear nothing against yourself. 

Sometimes the wind shifts, pulls away from the pit 
below, draws all the music and the whispering murmurs 
out of the cave. Then there is a strange quiet in the 
place. The carvings come out more distinctly; the little 
grotto seems to recall some silent, ceremonious happening, 
some pagan procedure, and if your fancy sees a hushed 
Druidic rite performing, your fancy may be as near the 
truth as if it played with an exact science. 





84 




Light and Shadow in the Park. 

By Virginia Garland. 

T IS perhaps thrice, or twice, it may be but 
once, in a Hfetime that we come mind to 
mind, heart to heart with poetry. The wide 
surge of the ocean, the mighty paean of a 
storm, the great epic, the world masterpiece, may leave 
us cold, and in some open, mobile moment, a shadow on 
a wall, a child's smile, the surprise of another hand laid 
on ours, and the great exaltation throbs in our soul. 

Year after year we may be insensate to the trooping 
marvels of beauty that pass and repass with the dawn 
and the dark, and some small, oft-overlooked thing will 
suddenly fuse our imagination into the white light of 
understanding. 

And when by peculiar training, by burning sorrow, 
by love, by misfortune, by innate, inherited tendencies, 
nurtured and guarded in grief and in joy, we come at 
last to be tempered to a state that often rings true to 
absolute beauty, yet it is here, too, that the lowly sight, 
the little, common thing may unexpectedly lift us to the 
greatest heights. 

^* 5^* ^^ 

So it was that one morning in Sempervirens Park I 
did not for the time being note the magnitude of the 



85 



Sequoias, the vastness of the sky, the mighty folded and 
outflung geology of the hills ; I only saw the fall of light 
on little vines and mosses, the luminous tinted shade 
upthrown beneath the tiny tangled leaves, the beamy 
labyrinths of sunshine that underthread the lowly 
grasses. 

Minute ferns unfold and cast their seed beneath a 
thatched roof of larger ferns ; small vines creep and 
strive, wreathing over their allotted bit of shadowed 
soil ; a delicate forest peeps out here and there under- 
neath a higher, stronger luxuriance. 

Much of this winding, tender jungle does not perceive 
a solar center ; for these hidden herbs the sun does not 
rise and set in a round blaze of glory. Their subdued 
sun is the reflected light from a pool of sunshme on a big 
leaf near by, the dispersed glow from the quivering spot 
of fire, on the flowing brook, or the refracted lustre 
turned aside from a sunblazed rock and filtered into their 
screened concealment. From the one source a thousand 
springs of light caught and held in intricate variety ; 
from these shining wells a million sifted sunrays darting, 
piercing, curving into the smallest retreat, finding and 
feeding the tender plants that sheer unblended sunshine 
would wither and blight. Worlds within worlds along 
the forest trail, little realms of greenery revolving around 
each sun filled spathe, every leaf placed in dainty relation 
to every other leaf, the shadow of sprig and spray cast at 
the appointed moment over the gilded delicacy of an over- 
heated tendril ; and the vision is startled and upheld in 



86 



as great heights as if one had been carried into eternal 
space and watched the planers revolving at his feet. 

Hearing the little leaves singing in the sifted sunshine, 
you hear the song that the stars sirig together. 

^* (^* i?* 

I had watched the moonlight merge slowly into the 
Hght of day ; so slowly I could not fix the moment when 
the dense patches of white lifted from the floor of the 
forest became transparent over the faintly showing fern!=; 
and lichens ; when the ivory and black that wrapped the 
trees about, blurred and broke in gauzy rifts, letting the 
first pale glimmer of green shine through the dissolving 
moonlight. 

Drawn across the dawning a scale wren's tremolo 
whistle, eager with morning joy, yet so pervaded by the 
mystery of the transformation, I knew the bird had been 
awake in the white moonlight waiting for the break of 
day. 

Little candles of sunlight began to twinkle on the tip 
of the tan oak leaves ; kindling sparks dropped from the 
sunrise fires on the horizon-watching redwoods. 

Then the incandescent points spread in dififused fire 
over the leaves. Heaped layers of sunshine seemed to 
press the branches down with a burden of gold, that 
lowered from spire to bough, from bough to the forest 
floor, traveling down the trees as an hour before the light 
of the moon had shifted and moved upward. 

The sun was in the sky. 




87 




88 
V ' 



^W 



Birds, leaves, brooks, winds were singing the sunrise 
song, that matin hymn a darkened humanity has forgot 
and left to the dwellers of the wild. 

The sun fathomed with a shimmering plummet a deep 
/ canyon of the basin. Through a gap in the walls, the 

/ ' following shadows underlined, upheld further vistas, 

curving about, hollowing distance, drawing bright pictures 
nearer, down a telescope of velvet shade. 

A silver redwood shaft rubbed midway with a russet 
stain, where a falling tree had scraped aside the weath- 
ered bark, bringing a shreddy blur of cinnamon to the 
surface. On the warm red background, a shadow spray 
of madrono leaves, moving softly, swinging up against 
the russet tone, dipping its lower outlines into the sil- 
vered bark, curveting and flickering as if the wind surely 
touched its unsubstantial contour. I looked in vain for 
the actual breeze-fingered madrono spray, then back to 
the phantom picture, whose etherial composition seemed 
more real than the growing leaves hidden, lost among 
green hosts. 

Along the stream the light shining through the leaves 
is green and golden. The foliage has become transpar- 
ent. Woodwardias, burned and thin, radiate an amber 
tint. Rosetted branches of azalea leaves, suspended by 
frail stems, float airily over the water, transmitting a 
topaz glow. They seem no longer leaves, rather are they 
spattered patterns of sunshine. Side by side with the 
real marquetry of light, yellow leaf and yellow sun 
patches can hardly be distinguished apart; and when the 




83 



gloaming comes down the canyon the green dusk is 
lighted for an hour by these leaf-shaped bits of concen- 
trated sunshine. 

There is the keenest value in autumn sunshine. In the 
days of golden light that come between the unrestrained 
glow of summer and the wan sunshine of winter, there is, 
if it may be so described, an experienced, mature play of 
light. No exuberance wasted, every touch with telling 
effect, and the warmth and color and thrill of this late, 
passionate sunshine is like the smile of a sweet, wise 
woman learned in the power to charm, yet unworn and 
vital in emotion. 



Water is glazed over to most eyes ; its depths covered 
by the veneer of its main color. The surface observer 
sees little else but a grey or green or blue expanse, quiet 
or disturbed, as the case may be. But once get a glance 
into the green lift of a curling wave through whose 
incredibly delicate walls the sunrise or the afterglow pene- 
trates ; follow a shaft of light down deep in a mountain 
pool, or seek the oblique sight of oily colors mingling on 
a calm lake, and forever after the light and shadow will 
show you a world of magic in water. The earth's aspect 
is frank, open, simple compared to the mystery that Hes 
in aqueous depths. There is nothing under heaven which 
can so persuade one of merry sorcery, of the spell of 
incantations, up-called dripping sprites, unseen singing, 







90 



the chucklings of pixies and all wood fantasies and all 
river mysteries, like the long water falling into a hidden 
green pool sunk in a mossy mountain cleft. Drive Pan 
from other fastnesses of the hills and you will still find 
him fingering his reeds, his hoofed limbs crossed, com- 
fortably settled somewhere about the rim of the mala- 
chite colored bowl. 

I came to watch the light play into the green pool, but 
would hear laughter, laughter shaking in the ripples. In 
the white cascades falling, with an upward rise of foam 
and a glee so ascendant, they seemed to be climbing up, as 
well as down the rocky rifts, I saw water babies turning 
over and over. Every splash was the dive of an elf. Do 
the beryl depths not call to you ? If there is anything 
akin to river spirits in your blood, your heart pounds and 
dances with the falls ; you want to sink down, down in the 
gold flecked pool and the tingling cold will be a delirium, 
a fire in your veins ; you will rise dripping, renewed, 
remade. For half a minute, a fluid purer and nearer the 
source than your own tepid human blood throbs in your 
veins. 

One strand of the glassy fall swerved, struck a project- 
ing rock, shattered to a million drops, denting the pool 
with sparkling points. The main stream dropped straight 
into the green water, forming an embossed milk white 
circle of froth, that rose from the green chalice cease- 
lessly opening, constantly blossoming, springing from the 
emerald level, a white wonder of whirling flower foam. 

Out of this marvel is born another — air bubbles. But 




91 



have you seen them when for a few fleeting moments in 
the light that comes up through the virescent hquid, they 
become live jewels, skimming, darting irridescent miracles 
of mixed water, color and air ? 

The effervescent, formless ether, caught in the pulsing 
beat of the cascade, carried down into the mountain tarn, 
mysteriously moulded under the water, floated upward, 
swimming over the surface, cast into prismatic globules 
that quivering, hold all the colors of heaven and earth. 
You must have eyes to see ; your attention must not 
waver. One glance will not give you their beauty. Only 
the long, penetrating gaze will melt your own clouded 
perceptions and the glaze that closes all water over. If 
your pursuant faculties have not caught just the right 
illumined moment of the passing sun-touch, on the little 
round spheres, they are but dancing air bubbles, colorless 
and commonplace. 

These evanescent glimpses of beauty that we may dis- 
cover at any hour in the round day of sunshine and shade. 
are creative through the awakened consciousness as well 
as revealing. 

In a sense, their beauty is not there until we see it ; our 
perception of the irridescent bubbles forms, paints and 
imbues them with life ; for Nature is guided by, while 
guiding the vision of man. The soul of the earth and the 
soul of humanity forever touch and mingle. Out of 
supreme generic forces our conception of beauty brings 
forth to the eye especial forms, specific expressions of 
loveliness and life unseen before. 




92 



V 



^^ 



Poetry is not poetry until human hearts beat with its 
rhythm, until the blood in us sings with its melody, until 
the mind reaches upward, finding- in every song a move- 
ment toward God. 

What matter if it is a shadow, a smile, a floating air 
bubble that brings the soul for one moment in perfect 
harmony with the Universal Pulse? 



•J 






93 



THE MADRONO. 

Captain of the western wood, 
Thou that apest Robin Hood ! 
Green above thy scarlet hose, 
How thy velvet mantle shows : 
Never tree like thee arrayed, 
O thou gallant of the glade. 

When the fervid August sun 
Scorches all it looks upon. 
And the balsam of the pine 
Drips from stem to needle fine, 
Round thy compact shade arranged, 
Not a leaf of thee is changed ! 

When the yellow Autumn sun 
Saddens all it looks upon, 
Spreads its sackcloth on the hills, 
Strews its ashes in the rills, 
Thou thy scarlet hose dost doff. 
And in limbs in purest buff 
Challengest the somber glade 
For a sylvan masquerade. 

Where, oh where, shall we begin 
Who would paint thee, Harlequin? 
With thy waxen burnished leaf. 
With thy branches red relief, 
With thy poly-tinted fruit, 
In thy spring or autumn suit, — 
Where begin, and oh, where end, — 
Thou whose charms all art transcend? 

— Bret Hartc. 



/;-' 



I 





^A 



94 




Autumn Color. 

By Virginia Garland. 

|||N these Autumn canyons, red is subordinate to 
green and yellow. You must search for the 
touch of scarlet and crimson and when you 
find it, the bright surprise is more charming 
for its rarity. 

Long sprays of honeysuckle festoon the brush, tipped 
with clustering scarlet drops. The Red huckleberry 
bushes are hung with coral beads. The false Solomon's 
Seal is heavy with large berries. You wonder how the 
tiny, white flowers that formed its feathery summer plume 
could so develop in fruiting size. You are always won- 
dering in the woods. If you have lost yourself in the 
shadowy spell of the forest, you come to the ways of men 
again with the clear, wide gaze of a child, the crow's feet 
and the fretting concern washed from your eyes. But if 
you care more for the personal effect than you do for the 
deep delight of the woods, the wrinkles and the worry 
will still be there. Lose yourself. 

Along the streams, the thin, yellow leaves of Burning 
Bush shade its pretty, pendant fruit. The outer pink 
encasing rayed open, from the four sections, attached by 
frail threads, hang the scarlet swinging seeds. The vir- 
ulence of poison oak is all forgotten in the delight of its 
high flaunted red ; a running flame in the cool green 



95 



canyons, a girding' fire about the lavender grey spruce 
trunks and the rufous boles of the Sequoias. When the 
sunlight strikes the encircled shafts, an effect of fire glow 
is given in more than color. The tree appears to smoul- 
der in heat. The wreaths flicker in the wind, moving 
jets of red play over the bark, and the moted smishine is a 
smoky yellow haze that wavers between the red, lapping 
vines. Near to the tree you smell the pungent odor of 
warm bark and hot red leaf. 

On the open ridges toyon berries are washed in early 
scarlet. In a month they will be deepest crimson. Here 
in the park, there will be no plundering hands to take 
them from their best appointed place. 

The madrono's granular berries swing in all shades of 
red and orange. The curled up funnels of colorful bark 
are cast down with prodigal carelessness, returned each 
year to the source from which they came. 

The upper limbs twist and iwine in young, naked toning. 
Out of the sunlight and wind and rain the tree will recall 
its discarded color, recloak itself again in all its burnished 
beauty. Forever casting off its painted sheathing, fling- 
ing itself to the winds, weaving ruddy suggestions into 
fixed and fiery copper, only to roll up the incomparable 
hues, to throw them broadcast, starting the color shuttle 
again upon the first woof of its pale tan texture. 

The madrono gives lavishly — it might appear waste- 
fully. Ah, no, it gives wastelessly; it has the secret of 
giving and taking without stint or limit ; putting out 
measureless expression to profit, that old secret whose 




C6 



warrant is written in an Ancient Book, "To him that 
hath shall be given." 

A gleam of blue above the moss and fern where clin- 
tonia leaves droop upon the earth ; their wet smoothness 
melting into the soil. On the tall stem where once pink 
lilies hung, a rare fall of lapis lazuli beads. Birds are 
fond of the blue berries ; they are seldom left in ample 
numbers. Water dogs and snails eat them, too, I believe, 
for we find the long stems pulled down, laced back and 
forth to the earth with glutenous threads where the slimy 
ones have crawled. 

(^* 5^* ^* 

And over all, the gentian blue of the Santa Cruz sky, 
not a distant background in the park. It comes forward 
here through the forest aisles, outlines the leaves, upholds 
the flying motif of a bird's wings, circles and sweeps 
between and around the mosaic designs of meadow, glade, 
stream and rock, like the azure enamel of a Cloisanne 
vase. The sight wavers from the receding imagery to 
the device of the bright circling background. 

In the forest, the eye can not always keep the contour 
of the outlined picture clear, the blue persistent sky is so 
prominently defined. 

If there were no color anywhere in California save in 
the green of its ever verdant woods, the gold of its sun- 
light, the blue of its skies, these three vivid hues alone 
would make it a land of brilliant color. Without the 



97 



green and the gold, how intense and wonderful still the 
peculiar blue shadowed atmosphere, distinctive to the 
coast. In the East, duller skies and scarlet, orange, pur- 
ple, crimson autumnal foliage. Throughout the Pacific 
States, a painted air immersing, changing, glorifying local 
color — brown to bronze, yellow to gold, leaden to violet, 
dense to diaphanous, pallid to prismatic, seeping down 
from the cobalt heavens, an illumined atmosphere that 
bathes the country in floating, rarified gorgeous dyes. 




98 




Fungi Gardens. 

By Virginia Garland. 

NDER the fallen foliage is a hidden garden. 
Brilliant fungi flowers bud, bloom, ripen 
unseen to most eyes. Stir the matted leaves 
aside ; scarlet and yellow and wine-red Rus- 
sulas stud the soil, indigo blue Leptonias brighten the 
mould. 

Some of these toadstools are poisonous, some are edible, 
but their thatched over color is always a wholesome lure 
to follow, leading one along a trail of ambushed enchant- 
ment. Hunt for a blue or red or golden knob under the 
thick leaf layers, turn it around and a door opens to happy 
secret chambers of beauty underground. 

Here is a tiny closed pink parasol tinted in palest rose ; 
through the chiffon' fabriced folds, the" delicate ribs show, 
pressed down about the stem.' This little fungi plant is 
as fresh and lovely as a wild rose. 

There is a small cream colored waxy agaric with the 
fragrance of some tropical flower. In the temperate 
dampness of these woods, you catch the odor of a breeze 
that might be wafting from citrus groves — so heavy and 
bitter-sweet the perfume. 

Along a rotted trunk, hundreds of slanted receptacles 
filled with a black liquid looking substance, the tip tilted 
cups, however, never spilling their brimming contents 



99 



over. The black watery appearing stuff i$ as solid as the 
dull black bowls that hold it. 

Infinite shapes, carved spikes, spatulate clubs, queer 
little spirals, rising- from buried spruce cones, red snaky 
staffs uprearing. 

An Armillana brushed with stringy dabs of orange and 
red, laid on so thick they look like drying paint strokes. 

Sometime the color is placed on the cap of fungi plants, 
sometimes a dull pileus conceals the brilliant hued plates 
beneath. 

Here is a smoky colored cap, a Cortinarius; turn it 
over, the moist gills are so red they look soakisd'in blood. 

Beds of egg yellow Chanterelles, toothsome to man and 
the big grey squirrel and the tawny fox and the fat sktuik 
and coon, growing in abundance for all. Alabaster shells 
of the oyster mushroom, succulent flutings, tier upon tier, 
on an alder trunk spanning the stream. Sulphur and 
orange scallops of Polyporus bracketing the spruce 
trunks, for all their lurid color, dainty mouthfulls when 
fresh. They are more than c. hundred different varieties 
of edible toadstools in the park ; a full harvest for those 
who know how to gather and eat ; another harvest for 
those who know how to garner and assimilate color. 
Sometimes we seem to be wandering on the floor of the 
ocean. Over the trail sprawl dark leathery starfish forms, 
— Geasters or earth-stars. White, pink and yellow corals, 
branch through the cracked wet earth ; dainty shells are 
arrayed under branches. Big Bolcfi, like folded sponges, 
mussel-shaped black clusters, tendril-rimmed cup fungi, 



100 



mimicking ocean anemones ; grasses for seaweeds, jewel- 
eyed salamanders, like slow loitering fish, snails crawling 
about, a salty tang in the air from the disintregating toad- 
stools and the sound of waves in the pines — one might 
fancy the earth had become freakish, 

"Working a sea change 

Into something weird and strange." 

All these forms, this hidden color is not found in a day. 
Many walk over the hoarded reserves, scenting only the 
mould, seeing only some rotting ugly plant, that has 
pushed high above the leaves out of the cover where its 
beautiful prime is spent. 

Nor is the decay ugly. Under the microscope, curious 
and pretty spore shapes swim in the dissolving substance. 
The rich humus of the park is replenished each year by 
rotting fungi. The waning mushroom is performing a 
wonderful, beautiful decline — that earth embraced return, 
which is in realitv — restoration, new life. 




101 



THE SEQUOIAS. 

By Charles Elmer Jenny. 

God set seven signs upon this land of ours 

To teach, by awe, mankind his wondrous powers ; 

A river sweeping broadly to the sea ; 

A cataract that thunders ceaselessly ; 

A mountain peak that towers in heaven's face ; 

A chasm deep-sunk toward the nether place ; 

A lake that all the wide horizon fills ; 

A pleasant vale set gem-like in the hills ; 

And, worthy younger brother of all these, 

The great Sequoia, king of all the trees ! 

A cradle, song, and bed the waters meant ; 

The others, playground, grave and monument : 

All wonderful, but cold and hard and dead ; 

The trees alone, like man, with life are fed. 

Like him have felt the stir to rise from earth. 

To toil, to strive to heights of greater worth. 

To breast the storms and know the north wind's rage. 

And pass traditions down from age to age. 

O'er four score spans of human life they see. 

And whisper of their tales to you and me. 

Some men have worshipped 'neath their mighty beams — 

Some men have dreamed and told the world their dreams 

Some men have lain most humbly at their feet 

And sunk into the tired child's slumber sweet ; 

Some men — men? — have you seen plants wilt and worse. 

Their base engirdled by the cutworm's curse? — 

Such men with axe and saw have gnawed and gnawed 

And felled to earth what never back to God 

Their lives can raise — nor sons, nor grandsons raise, 

Through penance of a thousand arbor days. 





102 




Bird Life in the Park. 

By Virginia Garland. 

LONG any trail in the park, you will be sure to 
meet three large scratching birds — the Cali- 
fornia Towhee, the Spurred Towhee and the 
California Thrasher — mowing the dirt aside 
with his sickle bill. 

Two of these birds are brown ; the Thrasher has a long 
body, a great curved bill ; the California Towhee is fluffy 
and fat, with a short bill. The Spurred Towhee is black 
headed, white and brick-red breasted, and he has decid- 
edly red eyes, mildly pretty eyes for all their ruby glitter. 
The Thrasher's note is "quoy quoy," with an upward 
inflection; the Spurred Towhee calls "to-hee', to-hee'," 
accent on the last syllable ; the California Towhee or 
Chewink says his name shortly, emphasis on the first 
syllable — "che' wink." 

The bright colored Towhec's song is a peculiar vibrant 
trill on a descending scale, but so burred over it seems to 
sound on one note. The brown Towhee has a rather 
thin roundelay like shallow water gurgling about a stone, 
but the Thrasher is a marvelous singer, cousin he is to 
the Mocking-bird. No two birds sing quite alike, and 
they do not sing very often, so if you hear his rare per- 
formance some early, very early. Spring morning, that 
day is always set a little apart. Sweet, irregular phrasing, 
interspersed with drawling calls. You will not question 



103 



what bird is singing, if you have learned the pecuhar 
timbre of his "quoy." 

Now turn your attention to three sparrows, about the 
size of the EngHsh sparrow, of town streets. The White 
Crown, the Golden Crown and the Point Pinos Junco. 
Their call notes are much alike, a clicking note resem- 
bling the urge w^e make to horses between closed teeth. 
The first two birds are plump and greyish, white stripes 
between black on the crown of one, dull yellow streaks 
with the black on the head of the other. 

The Junco is smaller, black headed, greyish bufif on his 
breast, and he shows a white flit of feathers, on the 
fanned out margin of his tail — his song a sunny warble. 
The White Crown sings the year around : two descending 
notes, followed by a triplet trill. He sings also in the 
night. In the moonlight or in the dark silence, his sud- 
den rippling cadence overflows as if he was so full of 
music that it burst out of him in his sleep without con- 
scious volition. The Golden Crown sings three descend- 
ing notes, plaintively sweet. These six birds are resident 
wherever they are found in California. 

If, when your visit to the park comes to a close, you 
have learned to identify these little brothers of the air, 
school-teacher, parent, laborer, or professional man or 
woman, you will carry away in your heart a lesson of 
infinite value. If you can say with authority, "There is 
a Junco— see the white flit of his tail ; there is the Spurred 
red-eyed Towhee. Hark, a Thrasher is singing in the 
thicket," or if far away from the woods, you speak of the 



104 



^ 



California Towhee, the White Crown and Golden Crown 
Sparrow, you will never find the words come amiss, no 
matter when, how or where, you essay to use them. 

We know that meadow larks do not frequent deep 
canyons, that blue birds do not build in the reeds by the 
river, but in learning to identify less common birds, we 
often forget that locality will help us to find their names 
as well as color and shape. And this, while it simplifies 
the search for classification, doubles and trebles our 
enjoyment of the woods and fields. The labor of scien- 
tific arrangement would be rather profitless if we did not 
absorb a part of the beauty of the outdoors with our task. 
When we make note of a bird's food, his manner of 
procuring it, his way of flying and so forth, we learn also 
something of insect life, something of the flora of a 
region, something of the loveliness of space, in which 
diflferent landscapes are set. With the distinguishing 
range of a bird's habitat, we notice a hundred delightful 
things, that follow and surround and lure us on in the 
search for his name. 

When walking over rocky, treeless, sun warmed 
slopes, and a little metallic songed wren bobs up and 
down on an outcropping stone, you will know him for 
the Rock Wren ; you will not confuse him with the 
Caiion Wren and you have a clear impression of the 
region he lives in ; the rise of granite against the sky 
connected by curved lines of exposed sun beaten soil. 




105 



You see where his range ends down in the bushy hollows, 
or where the cool dark forests begin. 

He disappears in a crevice of the noduled stone, 
creeping through a crack he knows ; there he is again, 
bowing and singing on a distant rock. So you come to 
see the beauty that lies upon grey stones, the blue shadows 
that circle them, the crumbly dabs of rust-red lichens and 
the flat spreading grey green lichens that color them over. 
The Rock Wren will open your eyes, to more than his 
mere name and habits. A vague undefined and unde- 
fining enjoyment of Nature gives but small reward. We 
seem to be so constituted that idle dreaming is seldom 
beneficial. It may be even dangerous to enter the realm 
of the Open without some obvious thread to guide us, 
some search to quicken our perceptions. You find this 
little grey brown wren, with a black band across his tail, 
has a somewhat flinty tinkle in his song and you begin to 
understand how close is the association between sound 
and matter; how unconsciously the birds are forever 
interpreting and echoing what they hear and see. The 
wind infringes upon this hard rock strewn, barren ground 
with a hot, monotonous sweep, and the Rock Wren, hear- 
ing nothing but the whiff of breezes blowing through the 
unyielding cracks and runways of his stony haunts, sings 
a stiff, wheezy little lay that seems to fairly crackle with 
cheerful heat. 

Doubtless when you think of a wren, you picture a 
small bird with short wings and tip tilted tail, but the big 
Mocking-bird, the Catbird and the Thrashers all belong 




106 



to the wren family. The CaHfornia Thrasher has among 
some others, four Httle kinsfolk in the Big Basin, the 
Rock Wren, the Caiion Wren, Vigor's Wren and the 
Winter Wren. 

The Dotted Canon Wren is described by his name. If 
you add the White Throated Dotted Caiion Wren, his 
image and locality is clearly impressed upon your mind, 
and you will surely know when you meet him on the 
banks of a deep ravine. What would you expect to hear 
in his song? Not the crisp, sunny, metallic music of the 
Rock Wren. Among all the sounds of his habitat, he 
hears most distinctly the drop and flow of water plashing 
down the center of the cool ravine, and his song runs 
as liquidly clear, through often louder tones, as the voice 
of the stream penetrates below and above, all the inarctic- 
ulate sounds of the forest. His song pours out of him 
in seven or nine descending notes, ending in a round pur- 
ling, eddying trill. Sometimes he closes his refrain by 
doubling back on the first notes, a sweet, wild recoil of 
fluent tones, reproducing the duplex bubble of swift water 
reverting upon itself. He has been called the "Bugler," 
and this quick rebound of coiling notes is not unlike the 
back winding, rallying call of some elfin horn. 

^* ^5* (^* 

All the small wrens have very similar call notes, harsh 
syllables which sound like "crick crick," in alarm run- 
ning together in a long scolding clatter. How unlike the 
calm, questioning "quoy quoy" of the big Thrasher. 



107 



Vigor's Wpen you are likely to find everywhere about 
village houses or in the far forests. He is another fine 
singer, a mimic, too, for mockery is a strong character- 
istic of the wren family. 

But in the wilderness of the Basin, there are many 
melodies as sincere and joyous as his simple little strain, 
and there his song has a richer quality, a more ebullient 
rise and fall. In the way of wrens, he often reverses his 
song, sometimes beginning and again ending with tum- 
bling grace notes. Vigor's Wren is silver breasted, dark 
brown on the upper part of his body, lighter beneath ; a 
long, narrow white line curves over his eye. 

And now we come to the tiny Winter Wren, the 
smallest wren in ■ the West, perhaps the smallest in the 
world, certainly in the park, living among the largest 
trees in the universe. A brown, shadowy mite, difficult 
to see, flickering in and out of the prostrate boles. Look 
for him on the ground, never in the high branches. He 
is also dotted and barred, but you will not confuse him 
with the Canon Wren, if you have said to yourself "the 
White Throated Dotted Caiion Wren" — he is so much 
smaller and has no soft white patch under his chin. His 
call note is a faint, short "click," but his song is so clear 
and loud, it sounds out of proportion with the stubby 
tailed wee creature, and it has also a wandering, mean- 
dering quality that seems to carry it up and down and 
far-away from the feathered midget, delving in the 
depths about a mossy log. 



108 



A strange breathless song cut off quickly without an 
ending cadence, as if some sudden interruption had 
caused the singer to shut his bill and swallow his notes 
in half a second. Back and forth on rapid tones he sings, 
with no rests between, rising and falling into different 
keys, with a movement that sounds blown up and down 
by the swell and drift of the wind, not controlled by the 
bird, and ceasing as if a stone wall had come between you 
and the singer, leaving you with the thought that the 
cool, breezy zigzag is continuing, as the wind goes around 
a buttressing hill out of hearing. 

Perhaps in a week or a month, it may be in a year, you 
will learn the names, localities and manners of ten birds. 
You have not lost time if it takes you twelve months to 
know these few, for no moment given to the woods and 
fields is ever lost. 

You may start out to find a bird and find a river in its 
stead. You may hunt for a common ground bird and be 
given the sight of a flock of rare warblers feeding in the 
top spires of a spruce. You may return home without a 
bird adventure, a friendly talk with some staunch oak to 
your credit instead. In looking for the region of certain 
birds, you may lose sight of the bird entirely and see as 
you have never seen before the beauty of alders marching 
in a winding procession along the river margin, the 
bosomed curve of bare hills, or the sun flecked turn of 
forest trails. As you seek your heart and mind will be 
filled. The bird or bee or butterfly you trail may be hid- 



-jfSV 




109 



den, but other visions crowd into its place. For no 
asking hour is left void in the Open. 

In some shut in day, say your five sparrows and your 
five wrens over, with descriptive adjectives. 

SPARROW FAMILY. 

The White Crowned Sparrow. 
The Golden Crowned Sparrow. 
The Black-headed Point Pinos Junco. 
The fat, fluffy, big brown California Towhee. 
The red and black and white red-eyed Spurred 
Towhee. 

WREN FAMILY. 

The big, brown, sickk-billed California Thrasher. 
The small, greyish, black-banded tail Rock Wren. 
The brown, White Throated Dotted Cafion Wren. 
The silver breasted, white eye-browed, brown 

Vigor's Wren. 
The wee, brown, shadowy Winter Wren. 

With these names will come the uplift of rocky mesas, 
the far leafy paths of the woods, the cool ramparted 
canons, wayside thickets, stretches of chaparrel, and the 
mossy shrines, in the distant redwoods. 





no 




The Green People. 

By ViRGiiliA' Garland. 

LL over the park, birds, waterfalls, canyons, 
hills, shrubs, and trees, are gradually learning 
a new sympathy with mankind. The mighty 
redwoods no longer stand in aloof austerity. 
Here and there certain trees liave not yet unbent; their 
towering branches are heavy with an ancient sighing that 
makes moan for the days of long ago, but for the most 
part the trees have responded to new kindly influences. 
Whether we imagine this or not is of small matter since 
our protective attitude has brought about a change in us 
which conceives their change possible. The trees in the 
park are guarded, and one result is our better under- 
standing of and a closer communion with Nature. Are 
these trees, inanimate, unfeeling, or are we too often 
obtuse, unfeeling toward them ? 

Stand in the sad, sold woods of Oregon, "the dark and 
doomed forests of northern California, and the most 
stolid feel a reflex impression of unconquerable gloom. 
This depression is not all climatic, for the National Parks 
in the same territory lack in an appreciable degree the 
heavy melancholy that lies over betrayed woods. 

Even the men who gloat upon the wealth this timber 
brings hurry away from a nameless dread they feel, but 
which they would hardly acknowledge as coming from 



Ill 



the trees. And with those who must labor year alter 
year in the lumber camps, there is more insanity than 
among any other class of outdoor workers. 

When quite outside of our knowledge of commercial 
conditions, of what fate hangs over the forest, we are in 
the main made sad in some woods, and soothed and 
cheered in others ; are we far from the truth in thinking 
that the trees directly incite our mood and that their mood 
is influenced by conditions we impose upon them ? The 
forces that breathe from a tree are as complex as the 
forces that breathe from a human being. 

It is not easy to keep the logical sense between cause 
and effect clear and true in studying humanity. It some- 
times happens that we make out our own kind to be 
strange, unreal, inhuman with the best philanthropic 
motives. How much more difificult to see and hear 
the Green People aright whose wordless protest, whose 
speechless assent reaches only that fine far inner sense 
of vision and hearing. 

We know that forests in the mass have a direct bearing 
upon rainfall and weather, as we know that the rise and 
fall of nations affect prosperity in certain result; but 
when we refine our reasoning upon the unseen agencies 
that act through individual trees, or upon the invisible 
powers that bear from one human medium to another, we 
are in a realm of conjecture that might be called imagin- 
ary no less in one than the other instance, but which 
signifies further, deeper, more intrinsically than some 
unimpeachable argument of merely material interaction. 



112 



We once thought good forestry only a matter of senti- 
ment. We are finding that State and National Parks 
have their physical and moral as well as esthetic value. 
The pleading, the threatening, of outraged Nature is 
interpreted by the poet long before the idea works its 
way into the hard utilitarian brain. So if some of us 
hear the trees speak, hear their long wailing call when 
they go down under the axe, hear the answering battle 
cry of sky and sea, hear their beneficent murmur, their 
rustling benediction when they are loved and cherished, 
we are not idle visionaries. The day is coming in the 
near future when the reckoning, controlling, practical 
portion of humanity will recognize that the life of a tree 
is a different expression of and stupendous factor m the 
life of the whole world. When we destroy our forests, 
we fling war into the teeth of the elements, that army 
whose rank and file we are indeed ill fitted to battle with ; 
when we separate and deaden the soul of a tree, we are 
segregating and making void just so much power in our 
own spiritual growth. 

(^W ^* (^W 

The trees in Sempervirens Park are looking down on 
a different manner of men ; workers who delve about 
their mighty roots, clearing away restricting litter, open- 
ing paths along the streams, freeing the choked water, 
tender of the tiniest vine, regardful of every mossy patch 
and ferny corner, removing only the cumbering rubbage. 
A labor of elimination that does not destroy but which 
clears, opens, reveals. 



^^-i^C^^^l^ri^^ 




The great trees know the tangled native plants will 
not be margined by silly box borders. The madrono 
and oak will lean to the Redwoods' sky touching shafts 
unfretted by the dissonance of foreign trees. What is 
left of the wilderness of the park will remain as it was 
planted before the Pharaohs and the miracle of that com- 
panion summoned wreathing and arboring in which man 
has had no hand, will continue. For the men and women 
into whose care this wonderful domain has come, know- 
that there is no landscape gardener like Nature, no plant- 
ing possible that can excel the exuberant, infinite sowing 
of the sun and wind and rain. The calling of the red- 
woods, the answering of the elements will go on without 
the bungling interference of humanity. 

As a road is leveled and strengthened about the con- 
tour of the hills, the birds will drop along its bare margin 
a twined line of beauty ; purple thistles and feathery fire- 
weed and the first transverse sprays of blackberry vine 
will use these as a support, until their runners are suffi- 
ciently vigorous and the thorny mound rests upon its own 
strong arches. 

When the dead brush is taken from a shady dell, oxalis 
and w^ood violet and vancouveria will quickly carpet the 
hollow. Where a lifeless jagged limb obstructs the view, 
breaking the jutting curve of stony banks and is lowered 
to its earth place, the engraver beetle will trace thereon 
his pretty biting etchings, the rotting trunks will soon be 
absorbed in living- moss and lichen. 

Through stony cliffs cut and laid bare, the rock break- 






114 



^J^v 



ing saxifrage will push and heave hanging resetted fes- 
toons from every creviee. 

Following close upon the removing, invoking toil of 
men, an answering principle in the fecund earth, covering 
over, renewing, restoring out of the houndless mystery of 
Life. 



And the great trees watch and wonder much. Surely 
a new race is coming on down there;- men who measure 
their girth in love, not in greed, taking the place of 
creatures they used to dread more than rot and disease, 
more than the wrecking fateful winds, more than the 
blasting, consuming fires. 

Through their branches the almost unbelievable mes- 
sage runs — "These men worshij) God with us." 




THE TREES OF EDEN. 

.\N INVOC.\T10N. 

.And God said, let the earth hring forth gras'^. and tlie hcrl) 
yielding seed and the fruit tree yielding fruit. '■' 

.And the evening and the morning were tlif third day. * * * 
.And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden. "■ '■' * 
And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow ever\- 
tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food. " 

.And the Lord God took the man. and put him in the garden 
of Hden to dress it and to keep it. 



115 



|:Y .M).\(;ri.\ MIl.l.KI!. 

Behold tliis iniriiclc, the tree, 

The third daj''s miracle, behold 

What stateliness, what majesty, 

What comeliness, contour, what mold 

Of limb, of leaf, of arms in air 
High held in attitude of prater. 



And yet we hew, and slash and slay 
God's first born, "pleasant to the sight," 

And set, ere he laid hand to clay 

And fashioned man to burn and blight. 

We see no grace at all : behold 
We only sec the sodden gold. 

The sweet name Nazareth means wood. 

The Christ companied with the trees ; 
He read their leaves, he understood ; 

His alphabet the birds and bees. 
Give us, oh God, to heed, to hear, 

To love, to cherish, to revere. 

Give us to heed how clean, how tall ; 

Give us like courage, patience, strength. 
To front the four winds, strength tn fall 

vSerene and satisfied, full length 
And full of years and majesty. 

As falls thine Eden fashioned tree. 




116 




The Chieftain. 





The Redwood. 




TATE FORESTER HOMANS officially 
describes the redwood in these terms : 

Under normal conditions of growth the redwood 
develops a long, cylindrical bole, clear for two 
thirds of its length, and surmounted by a narrow, tapering 
crown. Exceptional trees have measured 350 feet in height 
and 20 feet in diameter. 

Average dimensions of the trees customarily logged are 200 to 
275 feet in height, and 3 to 10 feet in diameter, and their ages 
run from four hundred to eight hundred years. 

In early life, the redwood grows rapidly both in height and 
diameter. Later, the growth falls ofif, and in old age is extremely 
slow. Instances are not rare of an old redwood increasing in 
diameter only six inches in the last three hundred years. 

Though a fairly prolific seed bearer the redwood rarely repro- 
duces itself by a seed. It sprouts readily from the stump and 
root-collar, and suckers from the roots ; and it is probable that 
the majority of trees now forming the forest originated in this 
way. 

This power of reproduction from sprouts is a property- 
denied to conifers in general. 

Another writer says of this process : 

When the deadly axe has felled a stately redwood, wheu the 
"tree" has disappeared, the massive stump sends up from its 
circumference a fringe of shoots that grow to saplings, and they 
to trees, that in the lifetime of a man absorb the growth that 
gave them birth, and in a few decades they tower — a ring of 




118 



^ 



,^ 





comely "giants" — with intorlockin.L; branches shading their ances- 
tral birthplace and grave. 

The tree has very few enemies, and is well protected against 
them. The thickness of its bark make it invulnerable to all but 
the hottest fires, and its wood, also, containing no resin does not 
burn easily. Very few fungous diseases are dangerous to it. 

The vitality of the tree is also remarkable. It not only lives to 
an astonishing age, but after being cut it sprouts repeatedly, 
using the quantities of nourishment stored in the enormous roots. 
And although successive forest fires will finally kill the stump, it 
will remain in the soil indefinitely without rotting. 

Redwood bark is of a reddish-gray color, fibrous in texture, 
and gives to full-grown redwoods a fluted appearance. 

The wood of the redwood varies greatly. The softest and 
best trees usually grow in the bottoms, the "flinty" timber occurs 
on the slopes. But this rule does not always hold good. All 
.sorts of unexpected and unaccountable differences in the quality 
of the timber occur. A .soft, fine-grained tree will be found close 
beside one "flinty" and less valuable. Even the practical logger 
is never sure until he cuts it what kind of lumber a redwood 
will yield. The tree's vitality is so great, it endures so many 
vicissitudes and suffers from so many accidents in the centuries 
of its existence, that the grain of its wood becomes uneven in 
proportion as its life has been eventful. The wood fibers formed 
under different rates of growth sometimes get up a tension so 
great that when the log is sawed the wood splits with a loud 
report. 

In color redwood lumber shades from light cherry to dark 
mahogany. It is easily worked, takes a beautiful polish, and is 
one of the most durable of the coniferous woods of California. 
It resists decay so well that trees which have lain 500 years in 
the forest have been sent to the mill and sawed into lumber. 



Ante-dating Histoiy. 

■'Tlie redwood tree is interesting- for its size," says 
Professor Sargejit, "but it is more interesting as the sole 
representative, with the allied species of the Sierras, of a 
race of giant trees which before the glacial period were 
widely spread over the northern hemisphere." 

While it is true that no specimen of the Sequoia family 
has been found in any part of the globe except California, 
and in limited areas here, it is claimed that it has been 
discovered in a fossil state on Disco Island in Baffin's 
I'ay. far within the Arctic circle. 

Among the relics of the cave man that have been 
found in Europe are pieces of redwood trees. 

The .petrified forests of Arizona are supposed to be 
remains of Sequoia forests which "went down to the 
primeval sea." were covered with sandstone and rose 
again. 

Discovery and Name. 

Discovered at an unknown early date, the coast red- 
wood was first described and published by Lambert of 
London in 1803, under the name of Taxodiiim seinper- 
-i-irens — he thinking the trees formed another species of 
the well known Taxodiuiu or bald cypress of the Eastern 
States. 

In 1847 Endlicher, a German botanist, believing that it 
was a distinct genus, published it under the name of 
Sequoia. This author, contrary to custom, omitted to 





.«fe/ 







.J 




give the origin of his name, and botanists have con- 
jectured that it was intended to commemorate 
"Sequoyah," a half-breed Cherokee Indian, who, all by 
himself, invented an alphabet and taught it to his tribe 
by writing it upon leaves. This alphabet came into gen- 
eral use among the Cherokees before the white man had 
any knowledge of it. In 1828 a periodical was published 
in it by the missionaries. Sequo Yah was banished from 
his home in Alabama with the rest of the tribe and settled 
in New Mexico, where he died in 1843. 

Sequo Yah's alphabet consisted of eighty-five charac- 
ters, one for each sound in the language; and it was so 
simple that in a few weeks a Cherokee could learn to 
read and write. Some philologists pronounce it the most 
perfect alphabet ever invented. 

It seemed fitting that the redwood should be named 
for the red man, yet Prof. J. G. Lemmon and others 
consider it to have been derived from sequor (to follow) 
alluding to the fact that our redwoods are the followers 
of a vanishing prodigious race, which Prof. Lemmon 
considers a much more appropriate and pleasing origin 
for the botanical name of our monster tree. 

Age. 

Prof. B. E. Fernow is probably the foremost authority 
in forestry in this hemisphere, if not in the world. He is 
a very highly educated German, and was connected with 
the Department of Forestry in the German Empire, later 
head of that department in the State of New York, and 



professor in Cornell ; and is now at the head of the 
Department of Forestry in the Dominion of Canada, 
and a professor in the University of Toronto. 

Professor Fernow spent some time a few years ago in 
this forest. He said that it was impossible to determine 
with any degree of certainty its age; that the usual 
tests, such as counting the rings, and the like, were 
misleading and untrustworthy. 

His own estimate was that two thousand years was the 
probable limit of the age of the oldest of the trees. Pos- 
sibly, but not at all probably, some specimens might be 
older. At the same time, he did not profess to speak 
with certainty or assurance. 

The count of rings on a redwood tree recently felled 
in another part of the State showed that the tree began 
life 525 B. C. 

Some years ago, the late Prof. William Russell Dudley, 
of Stanford University, wrote a life history of a redwood. 
The tree in question was one of moderate size, about 
fifteen feet in diameter, five feet from the ground. It 
was 270 feet in height and 2,171 years old. The history 
of the tree was as follows : 

B. C. 271 it began its existence. The first year of the Christian 
era it was about four feet in diameter about the base. A. D. 245, 
at 516 years of age, a burning three feet wide occurred on the 
trunk. One hundred and five years were occupied in covering 
this wound with new tissue. For 1,196 years no further injuries 
were registered. A. D. 1441, at 1,712 years of age, the tree was 
burned a second time, in two long grooves, one and two feet 
wide, respectively. Each had its own system of repair. 



121^ 






One hundred and thirty-nine years of growth followed, includ- 
ing the time of covering the wounds. A. D. 1580, at 1,851 years 
of age, occurred another fire, causing a burn on the trunk two 
feet wide, which took fifty-six years to cover with new tissue. 
Two hundred and seventeen years of growth followed this burn. 
A. D. 1797, when the tree was 2,068 years old, a tremendous fire 
attacked it, burning a great sear eighteen feet wide. One hundred 
and three years enabled the tree to reduce the exposed area of 
the burn to about fourteen feet in width. 

Other Aged Trees. 

There is a famous plane-tree in the .-Egean island of 
Cos which is said to be at least a thousand years old. 
]^)Ut it is said that there is in Europe no tree that can be 
proved to be more than eight hundred years old. The 
tree from which is said to have glanced the arrow that 
slew William Rufus in the New Forest was in existence 
in ihe eighteenth ccntur}-. when it was replaced by a 
stone in 1745. 

The Tortworth chestnut — supjjoscd to have been 
formed by a junction of two trees — was mentioned as a 
boundary mark in a record of the year 1135. The 
Swilear Lawn oak in Needwood Forest is proved b\ 
documents to have been at least six hundred years old. 

An oak at Tilford, near Farnham, is supposed to have 
been referred to in a charter granted by Henry de Rlois 
in 1256. 

These are some of the tallest trees in Britain : the 
"Queen Beech" at Askridge Park. 135 feet high; the 
silver firs at Luss, Loch Lomond. 121 feet high ; and 
some beeches near Glasgow, which are 118 feet high. 



"'"lis;- :: 




Non-inflammable. 

Redwood lumber contains no resin or turpentine of 
any kind, and owing to its great resistant qualities of 
severe climatic conditions, is free from cracking or 
decay, where cinders might lodge and start fires. When 
burning it is easily extinguished with a small quantity of 
water and has the appearance of burned cork, and is 
harder to ignite a second time than at first. When the 
famous Baldwin Hotel of San Francisco was burned in 
the most densely populated part of the city, the firemen 
confined the flames to the building only ; and while the 
heat in the interior of the building was sufficient to melt 
cast iron, the weather boarding (which was of redwood), 
by applying the hose to the outside walls, remained almost 
intact when the fire had been extinguished within, after 
it had burned fiercely for five hours. 

At the time of the destruction of San Francisco by fire 
following the earthquake of 1906, the Southern Pacific 
Railroad Company saved their depot and yards, built of 
redwood lumber, south of Townsend street, with their 
own employees and private fire-fighting facilities. 

Redwood forests are practically unharmed by forest 
fires, and it is common practice iot the lumbermen to 
fell the trees and peel the bark from them and, when the 
dry season is on. set fire to the felled timber and burn 
the branches and bark and other wreckage without prac- 
tical injury to the saw logs, which procedure would 
mean disaster to anv other wood. 





^?r^54J^ 



Photo hr Hill. 



United Oaks. 





Sentiment and Shingles. 

HEX Theodore Roosevelt first stood under 
the shadow of a redwood, he said : 

Here you have some of the great wonders of 
the world. You have a singularly beautiful land- 
scape, singularly beautiful and singularly majestic scenery, and it 
should certainly be your aim to try and preserve that beauty and 
keep unmarred that majesty. There is nothing more practical 
in the end fciian the preservation of beauty which appeals to the 
higher of mankind. Take a big tree whose architect has been 
the ages, anything that man does toward it may hurt it and 
cannot help it. I feel most emphatically that we should not turn 
a tree which was old when the first Egyptian conqueror pen- 
etrated to the valley of the Euphrates— into shingles. 

That same season a single tree within six miles of 
where Mr. Roosevelt stood was converted into shingles, 
with the result : Yield of tree — 66,000 shakes, which 
sold for $14 per i.ooo, and 300 railroad ties, which 
sold for 38 cents each. 

To give reader and visitor an estimate or basis of 
comparison, it may be stated that the tree at the Gov- 
ernor's Camp, sometimes called "The Daughter of the 
Forest" and sometimes the "Princess," is what the timber- 
men call a good shake tree, and it is calculated that it 
would yield about 60,000 shakes. 

Commercially-minded men find it difficult to compute a 
sentimental value in excess of these figures, yet cash put 
into a cathedral could not produce the sanctuary efifect of 
these upward shafts that blend the heavens and the earth. 





'^mmm. 



Tributes to These Trees. 




OTABLE among" the word-paintings drawn of 
this forest, is the one wrought by D. M. Del- 
mas, and dehvered before the Legishiture at 
the time the bill was pending for the purchase 

of the park. Previous to its delivery j\Ir. Delnias had 

s])ent several days in the l>ig" Basin. 

hi the heart of the Santa Cruz Range this chosen spot is found. 
It presents to the eye the aspect of a vast amphitheater whose 
encircling walls are the dim heights of mist-crowned mountains. 
Seen from the crest of the ridge it stretches toward the setting 
sun, its distant outlines blending the purpHsh-blue tints of the 
woods with the hazj^ vapors of the ocean. From this point of 
view you catch a confused suggestion of a great forest watered 
by intersecting streams. Descend from your eminence and enter 
within the limits of the forest. Your first feeling is one of awe. 
Your very breath seems hushed by the solemn stillness of tiie 
place. Here the winds are mute. Their distant murmurings are 
unheard within the depths of the shaded solitude. Your step 
falls noiseless upon the thick carpet of marl — the cast-off vesture 
of countless season.s — upon which you tread. The crackling of a 
twig under your foot or the startled cry of a frightened bird but 
intensities the silence which enfolds you like a shroud. Contem- 
plate now the scene spread on every hand in never-ending vistas. 
See the great moss-covered oak, the light and graceful maple, the 
glossy laurel, everj'where entwining their branches and blending 
the varied hues of their foliage in tangled profusion, while here 
and there the glistening trunks of clustered madroiios stand out 
againsi the dark background like .streaks of yellow sunlight. As 
you lift up your ej^es, behold above the giant forms that sentinel 
the place. These are California's own — lurs. for in no other soil 




liaxe the}' ever found root and under no other breeze save that of 
the Pacific have they ever swayed their boughs. 

A sense of hiunility overvvhehns you as you gaze upon these 
massy pillars of Nature's temple, whose tops, lost amid tlie 
clouds, seem to support the vault of the IjIuc empyrean. Tlie 
spell which the mystic light of some venerable cathedral may at 
times have thrown upon your soul is tame compared to that 
which binds you here. That was man's place of worship ; this 
is God's. In the presence of these titanic ofifsprings of Nature, 
standing before you in the hoar austerity of centuries, how 
dwarfed seems 3'our being, how fleeting your existence ! They 
were here when you were born ; and though you allow your 
thoughts to go back on the wings of imagination to your remotest 
ancestrj', you realize that they were here when your first fore- 
father had his being. All human work which you have seen or 
conceived of is recent in comparison. Time has not changed 
them since Columbus first erected an altar upon this continent, 
nor since Titus builded the walls of the Flavian amphitheater, nor 
since Solomon laid the foundations of the temple at Jerusalem. 
They were old when Moses led the children of Israel to the 
promised land, or when Egyptian monarchs piled up the pyramids 
and bade the Sphinx gaze with eyes of perpetual sadness over 
the desert sands of the Valley of the Nile. And if their great 
mother. Nature, is permitted stUl to protect them, here they will 
stand defying time when not a stone of this capitol is left to 
mark the spot on which it now stands, and its very existence may 
Iiavc faded into tlie mists of tradition. 

^ ^ J* 

David Starr Jordan, l^resident of Stanford University, 
has said : 

California Redwood Park is a leaf from the greatest 0/ virgin 
forests, a sample of the redwoods as they have been for ten 
thou.sand years, and one which may he preserved for all times. 




128 



Ir*"^ 



Besides this, it is a botanical garden where the wax myrtle, the 
California nutmeg tree, the California whortleberry, the clintonia, 
the oxalis, and all the other plants which follow the redwoods 
^i-A may be likewise saved for our descendants. 

^* t^* t(?* 

United States Senator Perkins has said : 

I have traveled through the forests of Mariposa, and I have 
driven through the wonderful forests of southern Germany, yet 
I have never seen the equal of California Redwood Park. 

In some unknown way this foiest has come down to us from 
probably the pliocene age, bringing with it in all its native loveli- 
ness and primeval beauty its flora, consisting of its giant trees 
of sempervirens and embracing some fifty-two varieties of other 
trees. According to botanists, the Big Basin contains no moraine, 
neither lateral nor terminal, which clearly shows that it has not 
been at remote periods even visited by glacial action, and proves 
it to be of primeval origin and one of the oldest spots known 
to man. 

Surrounded by its great mountain rim, protected for unknown 
ages, it comes to us as a heritage from God, and in all its weird 
aspect it gladdens the heart, inspires the mind with the thoughts 
of the boundless powers of the Creator, and as we stand gazing 
at the giant trees, massive, tall, stately and grand, we are 
tempted to exclaim "They are the real temple of God !" We see 
in them the key to every church tower, and the lines and angles of 
our famed gothic architecture. 

!,?• V?** ti?* 

By G. Frederick Schurtz : "The beauty of the forest is 
not simply in character, but is due to many separate 



I 




129 



sources. The trees contribute much : the shrubs, the 
rocks, the mosses play their part ; the purity of the air. 
the forest silence ; the music of wind in the trees — these 
and other influences combine to produce woodland 
beauty and charm." 

Although John Burroughs was never in the forest, he 
delineates it perfectly when in one of his essays he says : 
"The book of nature is like a page written over or printed 
upon with different sized characters, and in many dif- 
ferent languages, interlined and crosslined. and with a 
great variety of marginal notes and references." 



\ 





/^ r A\, v^ 



MAR 8 1913 



...-■r <"; 



CCT 1'--^ 



m 



